
THE LIBRARY 
OF 

THE UNIVERSITY 

OF CALIFORNIA 

LOS ANGELES 



THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES 



Slavery 

of 

Our Times 



By 
LEO TOLSTOY 

Author <?/""War and Peace" Anna 
Karenina," Resurrection," etc. 



forfc 

Dodd, Mead & Company 

1900 



> 

n 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

INTRODUCTION, ..... vii 
PREFACE, ...... xxv 

CHAPTER 

I. GOODS-PORTERS WHO WORK 

THIRTY-SEVEN HOURS, . . 3 

II. SOCIETY'S INDIFFERENCE WHILE 

MEN PERISH, . . .15 

III. JUSTIFICATION OF THE EXISTING 

POSITION BY SCIENCE, . . 23 

IV. THE ASSERTION OF ECONOMIC 

SCIENCE THAT RURAL LA- 
BOURERS MUST ENTER THE 
FACTORY SYSTEM, ... 33 
V. WHY LEARNED ECONOMISTS AS- 

SERT WHAT Is FALSE, . . 47 
yi. BANKRUPTCY OF THE SOCIALIST 

IDEAL, .... 55 



Contents 

CHAPTER PAGE 

VII. CULTURE OR FREEDOM? . . 67 

VIII. SLAVERY EXISTS AMONG Us, . 77 

IX. WHAT Is SLAVERY? ... 87 
X. LAWS CONCERNING TAXES, LAND 

AND PROPERTY, 95 

XI. LAWS THE CAUSE OF SLAVERY, . 109 
XII. THE ESSENCE OF LEGISLATION Is 

ORGANISED VIOLENCE, . .119 

XIII. WHAT ARE GOVERNMENTS? Is 

IT POSSIBLE TO EXIST WITH- 
OUT GOVERNMENTS? . . 129 

XIV. How CAN GOVERNMENTS BE 

ABOLISHED? .... 147 

XV. WHAT SHOULD EACH MAN Do? 167 

AN AFTERWORD, . . .183 



vi 



INTRODUCTION 

BY AYLMER MAUDE 

THIS little book shows, in a short, clear, and 
systematic manner, how the principle of non- 
resistance, about which Tolstoy has written so 
much, is related to economic and political life. 

The great majority of men, without know- 
ing why, are still constrained to labour long 
hours at tasks they dislike, and often to live 
in unhealthy conditions. It is not that man 
has so little control over nature that to obtain 
a subsistence it is necessary to work in this 
way, but because men have made laws about 
land, taxes, and property which result in plac- 
ing the great bulk of the people in conditions 
which compel them to labour thus, or go to the 
workhouse or starve. 

It may be said that man's nature is so bad 
vii 



The Slavery of Our Times 

that were it not for these laws an even worse 
state of things would exist; that the laws we 
make and tolerate are outward and visible 
signs of an inward and spiritual disgrace 
the selfishness of man, which is the real root 
of the evil. But granting that, in a sense, this 
may be true, we need not suppose man's nature 
to be immutable, and all progress forever im- 
possible. Nor need we suppose it our duty to 
leave progress in the hands of some kind of 
a self-acting evolution whose operations we 
can only watch as a passenger watches the 
working of a ship's engines. We may consider 
the effect of the laws we have made, approve 
or disapprove of them, discern the direction 
in which it is possible to advance, and take our 
part in furthering or hampering that advance. 
Laws are made by governments and are 
enforced by physical violence. We have been 
so long taught that it is good for some people 
to make laws for others that most men approve 
of this, just as " genteel" people have been 
viii 



Introduction 

known to approve of wholesale when they 
turned up their noses at retail business; so 
people in general, while disapproving of rob- 
bery and murder when done on a small scale, 
admire them when they are organised and allots 
the land on which forty millions have to live to 
a few thousand ; when it sends thousands to be 
killed, or when it subdivides the responsibility 
for an isolated murder between the queen, the 
hangman, and the judge, jury, and officials. 

To Tolstoy's mind, violence done by man to 
man is wrong. We cannot escape the wrong- 
ness by doing it wholesale, or by subdividing 
the responsibility. 

But what would happen if we ceased to 
abet it? 

If it were possible forcibly to oblige men to 
cease from using force, the selfishness which 
is at the root of the matter would, no doubt, 
burst out in some fresh form. That is, in fact, 
pretty much what has happened. Weary of 
strife and private feuds, people consented to 
ix 



The Slavery of Our Times 

leave to governments the use of force. External 
peace among individuals has ensued, but in 
place of strife with club or sword a new 
struggle almost as fierce is carried on under 
legal and commercial forms. Tolstoy's desire 
is not that people should be compelled to cease 
from violence, but that violence should become 
to them abhorrent, and that they should not 
wish to sway others more than they can be 
swayed by reason and by sympathy. Were that 
accomplished, surely we may trust that good 
would come of good, as now ill comes of ill. 
At any rate, as Tolstoy shows, there is no other 
path of advance. We can neither revert to the 
belief that to use violence is a divine right of 
kings nor can we maintain the current belief 
that to do so is a divine right of majorities. 
To be subjected by force to a rule we disapprove 
of is slavery, and we are all slaves or slave 
owners (sometimes both together) as long as 
our society bases itself on violence. 

But can we abolish the use of violence and 



Introduction 

cease to imprison and kill our fellow-men ? We 
can at least consider what Tolstoy says on the 
matter, and realise that organised violence 
exists, claiming our approval, and that it is 
possible to withhold that approval. As for 
abolishing violence, it is for us not a question 
of yes or no, but it is a question of more or less. 
The amount of violence committed depends on 
the amount of support the violators receive. 
There are places where it is now impossible to 
get any one to become a hangman, and even in 
England, comparatively brutal as we are, it 
would be impossible to re-enact the penal code 
of George III., under which one hundred and 
sixty different crimes were punishable with 
death. To shake ourselves completely free from 
all share in violence is not possible. Tolstoy 
himself does not profess to have ceased to use 
postage-stamps which are issued, or the high- 
way that is maintained, by a government which 
collects taxes by force; but reforms come by 
men doing what they can, not what they cannot, 
xi 



The Slavery of Our Times 

It would be a very easy and a very silly reply 
to the teaching of Jesus to say that as He tells 
us to be perfect, and we cannot be perfect, we 
can get no guidance from His teaching. In the 
same way, any one who wishes to be logical 
but not reasonable may say that, as Tolstoy tells 
us, to stand aside from all violence ; and as we 
cannot do so, his guidance is useless. Tolstoy 
relies on his readers to use common-sense ; and 
the common-sense of the matter is that if we 
are so enmeshed in a system based on violence, 
and if we ourselves are so weak and faulty that 
we cannot avoid being parties to acts of vio- 
lence, we should avoid this as much as we can. 
The mind is more free than the body. Let 
us, at least, try to understand the truth of the 
matter, and not excuse a vicious system in order 
to shelter ourselves. When we have understood 
the matter, let us not fear to speak out; and 
when we have confessed our views, let us try to 
bring our lives more and more in harmony with 
them. 

xii 



Introduction 

To free ourselves from the perplexity pro- 
duced by the dual standard of legality and of 
right would alone be an enormous gain. Take, 
for instance, the drink traffic in England. What 
friction and waste of power has resulted from 
the attempts to legislate on the matter! How 
greatly brewers, distillers, and dealers have 
gained in respectability by the fact that their 
occupations were legal, if not right. And how 
evident it is becoming that it is not by laws 
that such evils as the drink trade can be met. 

But, we are told, people are so inconsiderate 
and so wrongheaded that nothing but the 
strong arm of the law will restrain them. To 
disturb their respect for the law is dangerous. 

Of course, it is dangerous! Every great 
moral movement and every strong reform 
movement has its very real dangers. A century 
and a half after St. Francis of Assisi had 
stirred Europe by his example of self-renuncia- 
tion and devotion to the service of others such 
a crowd of impudent mendicants, shirking 1 the 
xiii 



The Slavery of Our Times 

drudgery of a workaday world, were preying 
on society in his name that Wyclif denounced 
them as sturdy beggars, and strongly censured 
any " man who gives alms to a begging friar." 
History is apt to repeat itself in such matters ; 
and, no doubt, Tolstoy's views will be again 
and again exploited by unworthy disciples. But 
is humanity to stagnate because what is evil is 
so easily grafted on what is good? To think 
and to move may be dangerous, but to stagnate 
is to die; and progress along the path of vio- 
lence as Babylon, Assyria, Egypt, Rome, 
Spain, and many another nation have shown 
is progress to destruction. 

No doubt, too, many good people will be 
shocked at Tolstoy's statement that " laws are 
rules made by people who govern by means of 
organised violence." They will plead that, in 
modern governments, the administrative func- 
tions are becoming more and more predominant 
and the coercive ones are falling more and more 
into abeyance. But governments need only 
xiv 



Introduction 

drop these dwindling and secondary functions 
in order to escape the criticism here levelled at 
them. Governments which, without insisting 
on having their services accepted, are content 
to offer to organise society on a voluntary basis 
killing no one, imprisoning no one, and rely- 
ing on reason and persuasion to make their 
decrees prevail are not here attacked. 

Whatever good-natured people may wish to 
believe about governments, the fact is that 
existing governments rely on force, and that 
when they do not rely on force we do not call 
them governments, but voluntary associations. 

That men concerned in governing others 
know this is shown all through history, and has 
been again shown recently in South Africa. 
As long as Kruger and his party had the armed 
force, the Boer reform party, the miners, and 
even Messrs. Beit, Rhodes & Co. had to sub- 
mit. In the time of the Raid the question who 
in future should make the laws hung in the 
balance it might be Kruger or Rhodes or 
xv 



The Slavery of Our Times 

somebody else but it was sure to be the man 
or men who could obtain the advantage of 
being allowed openly, systematically, and un- 
blushingly to do violence to those who dis- 
obeyed them. Men who were organising the 
buccaneers one day might become ( and may yet 
become) a " government" another day. In 
fact, just as in Sparta it was considered im- 
moral not to thieve, but to be caught thieving, 
so among modern moralists (such as Paley) it 
has been gravely argued that the morality of 
using violence against the men in power de- 
pends on the chance of being successful. 

Tolstoy says that the systematic use of or- 
ganised violence lies at the root of the ills from 
which our society suffers, and while agreeing 
in the indictment Socialism brings against the 
present system, he points out that the establish- 
ment of a Socialist State would involve the 
enforcement of a fresh form of slavery direct 
compulsion to labour. And if he is not at one 
with the Socialists, neither is he at one with 



xvi 



Introduction 

the Revolutionary party of Russian Anarchists, 
usually spoken of in England as " Nihilists." 
They, indeed, are often very bitter in their 
denunciations of Tolstoy, whose influence has 
increased the moral repugnance felt for their 
policy of assassination. Their accusation that 
Tolstoy wishes to oppose despotism by mere 
metaphysics is, however, met in the present 
work by a direct and explicit appeal to conscien- 
tious people not voluntarily to pay taxes to 
governments which spend the money on organ- 
ising violence and murder. 

This view of the duty of individuals towards 
governments has had exponents in our own 
language. The saintly Quaker John Woolman 
wrote in his journal in 1757 : 

" A few years past, money being made cur- 
rent in our province for carrying on wars, and 
to be called in again by taxes laid on the in- 
habitants, my mind was often affected with the 
thoughts of paying such taxes. . . . There was 
in the depth of my mind a scruple which I could 
xvii 



The Slavery of Our Times 

never get over; and at certain times I was 
greatly distressed on that account. I believed 
that there were some upright-hearted men who 
paid such taxes, yet could not see that their 
example was a sufficient reason for me to do so, 
while I believe that the spirit of truth required 
of me, as an individual, to suffer patiently the 
distress of goods rather than pay actively." He 
found he was not alone among the Friends of 
Philadelphia in this matter. 

Nearly a century later Henry Thoreau wrote 
in his admirable essay on " Civil Disobedience" : 

" I heartily accept the motto, ' That govern- 
ment is best which governs least ;' and I should 
like to see it acted up to more rapidly and sys- 
tematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to 
this, which also I believe : ' That government 
is best which governs not at all ;' and when men 
are prepared for it that will be the kind of 
government which they will have. . . . 

" It is not a man's duty, as a matter of course, 
to devote himself to the eradication of any, even 
xviii 



Introduction 

the most enormous, wrong; he may properly 
have other concerns to engage him; but it is 
his duty, at least, to wash his hands of it and, 
if he gives it no thought longer, not to give it 
practically his support. . . . 

" I do not hesitate to say that those who call 
themselves Abolitionists should at once effectu- 
ally withdraw their support both in person and 
property from the government of Massachu- 
setts, and not wait till they constitute a major- 
ity of one before they suffer the right to prevail 
through them. I think it is enough if they have 
God on their side without waiting for that 
other one. Moreover, any man more right 
than his neighbours constitutes a majority of 
one already." 

Holding these views, he refused to pay the 
poll-tax, and was put in prison for one night, 
till some one paid the tax for him, much to his 
disgust. 

Tolstoy, therefore, is in good company in 
holding the view that it were better to offer 
xix 



The Slavery of Our Times 

a passive resistance to governments than volun- 
tarily to pay what they demand and misapply. 
Such refusals might bring about the bloodless 
revolution of which Thoreau spoke : 

" If a thousand men were not to pay their 
tax bills this year, that would not be a violent 
and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, 
and enable the state to commit violence and 
shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the defini- 
tion of a peaceful revolution, if any such is 
possible. If the tax gatherer or any other 
public officer asks me, as one has done, ' But 
what shall I do ?' my answer is, ' If you really 
wish to do anything, resign your office.' When 
the subject has refused to pay allegiance, and 
the officer has resigned his office, then the revo- 
lution is accomplished." 

But while we remember that Tolstoy is in 
good company in this matter, and that he here 
offers just what some people pine for some- 
thing definite and decided to do or to refuse 
to do we shall, I think, make a sad mistake 
xx 



Introduction 

if we fail to differentiate between the main 
intention and drift of his work and such a piece 
of practical advice as this. 

The main intention and drift of the work is 
to show that progress in human well-being can 
only be achieved by relying more and more on 
reason and conscience and less and less on man- 
made laws ; that we must be ready to sacrifice 
the material progress we have been taught to 
esteem so highly rather than acquiesce in such 
injustice and inequality as is flagrant among 
us to-day ; and, finally, that violence from man 
to man must more and more be recognised as 
evil, whether it boasts itself in high places or 
lurks in slums, and that we must more and 
more free ourselves from the taint of murder 
that clings to all robes of state. 

These things, to my mind, seem certainly 
true ; we must turn our back on the religion of 
Jesus if we would rebut them. 

But as soon as it comes to any definite pre- 
cept and external rule to do this or not to do 
xxi 



The Slavery of Our Times 

that, there is room for reply. What is really 
needed, and what Tolstoy is aiming at, is that 
mankind should steadily advance toward per- 
fection, and no one action can be the next step 
for all men in all places. So when we come to 
the injunction to pay no tax, we may remember 
the passage (Matt. xvii. 24-27) in which Jesus 
is reported to have told Peter to catch fish and 
pay the tax for them both. The passage seems 
to mean : " We are in no way bound to pay, but 
if they demand the tax of you, give it, not be- 
cause you are under any obligation, but because 
we must not resist him that is evil. If any 
man would take your cloak, give him your coat 
also." And that is what Tolstoy thought it 
meant when he wrote The Four Gospels. 

In the present work, however, he is not in- 
terpreting the Gospels, but is dealing with 
present problems on the plane of thought of 
the jurists and the economists. And whatever 
may be the best method of undermining the 
authority of the Prince of this World, his con- 
xxii 



Introduction 

demnation by Jesus makes in the same direction 
as Thoreau's Civil Disobedience and Tolstoy's 
Theory of Non-Resistance. Each in his own 
way says : " The kings of the Gentiles have 
lordship over them ; and they that have author- 
ity over them are called Benefactors. But ye 
shall not be so: but he that is the greatest 
among you, let him become as the younger ; and 
he that is chief, as he that doth serve" (Luke 
xxii. 25-26). 

The Prince of this World is judged, the 
change foreshadowed is a vast one, and must 
commence with a change of each man's inner 
self. But its outward manifestations may be 
as various as the flowers of the field, which are 
all fed by the same rain and sunshine from 
above. 

GREAT BADDOW, CHELMSFORD, 
October, 1900. 



xxm 



AYLMER MAUDE'S TRANSLATION OF 
TOLSTOY'S PREFACE 

" They that take the sword shall perish by the sword." 

NEARLY fifteen years ago the census in 
Moscow evoked in me a series of thoughts and 
feelings which I expressed as best I could in 
a book called What Must We Do Then? 
Towards the end of last year (1899) I once 
more reconsidered the same questions, and the 
conclusions to which I came were the same as 
in that book. But as I think that during these 
ten years I have reflected on the questions 
discussed in What Must We Do Then? more 
quietly and minutely in relation to the teach- 
ings at present existing and diffused among 
us, I now offer the reader new considerations, 
leading to the same replies as before. I think 
these considerations may be of use to people 
xxv 



Preface 

who are honestly trying to elucidate their posi- 
tion in society and to clearly define the moral 
obligations flowing from that position. I, 
therefore, publish them. 

The fundamental thought both of that book 
and of this article is the repudiation of vio- 
lence. That repudiation I learnt and under- 
stood from the Gospels, where it is most clearly 
expressed in the words: It was said to you, 
An Eye for an Eye, . . . that is, you have 
been taught to oppose violence by violence, but 
I teach you : turn the other cheek when you are 
struck that is, suffer violence, but do not 
employ it. I know that the use of those great 
words in consequence of the unreflectingly 
perverted interpretations alike of Liberals and 
of Churchmen, who on this matter agree will 
be a reason for most so-called cultured people 
not to read this article, or to be biassed against 
it ; but, nevertheless, I place those words as the 
epigraph of this work. 

I cannot prevent people who consider them- 
xxvi 



The Slavery of Our Times 

selves enlightened from considering the Gospel 
teaching to be an obsolete guide to life a 
guide long outlived by humanity. But I can 
indicate the source from which I drew my 
consciousness of a truth which people are yet 
far from recognising, and which alone can 
save men from their sufferings. 
And this I do. 

ii July, 1900. 



xxvn 



THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES 

" Ye have heard that it was said, An Eye for an Eye, 
and a Tooth for a Tooth " (Matt. v. 38; Ex. xxi. 24). 
" But I say unto you, Resist not him that is evil : but 
whosoever smitheth thee on thy right cheek, turn to him 
the other also " (Matt. v. 39). " And if any man would 
go to law with thee, and take away thy coat, let him 
have thy cloak also " (Matt. v. 40). " Give to every one 
that asketh thee ; and of him that taketh away thy goods 
ask them not again " (Luke vi. 30). " And as ye would 
that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise " 
(Luke vi. 31). 

" And all that believed were together, and had all 
things common " (Acts ii. 44). " And Jesus said, When 
it is evening, ye say, It will be fair weather, for the 
heaven is red " (Matt. xvi. 2). " And in the morning, 
It will be foul weather to-day : for the heaven is red and 
lowering. Ye hypocrites, ye know how to discern the 
face of the heaven; but ye cannot discern the signs of 
the times" (Matt. xvi. 3). 

" The system on which all the nations of the world are 
acting is founded in gross deception, in the deepest 
ignorance, or a mixture of both ; so that under no possi- 
ble modification of the principles on which it is based 
can it ever produce good to man; on the contrary, its 

xxix 



The Slavery of Our Times 

practical results must ever be to produce evil continu- 
ally." Robert Owen. 

" We have much studied and much perfected of late the 
great civilised invention of the division of labour, only 
we give it a false name. It is not, truly speaking, the 
labour that is divided, but the men divided into mere 
segments of men, broken into small fragments and 
crumbs of life ; so that all the little piece of intelligence 
that is left in a man is not enough to make a pin or 
a nail, but exhausts itself in making the point of a pin 
or the head of a nail. Now, it is a good and desirable 
thing, truly, to make many pins a day; but if we could 
only see with what crystal sand their points were pol- 
ished sand of human souls we should think there 
might be some loss in it also. 

" Men may be beaten, chained, tormented, yoked like 
cattle, slaughtered like summer flies, and yet remain in 
one sense, and the best sense, free. But to smother 
their souls within them, to blight and hew into rotting 
pollards the suckling branches of their human intelli- 
gence, to make the flesh and skin . . . into leathern 
thongs to yoke machinery with this is to be slave 
masters indeed. ... It is verily this degradation of 
the operative into a machine which is leading the mass 
of the nations into vain, incoherent, destructive strug- 
gling for a freedom of which they cannot explain the 
nature to themselves. Their universal outcry against 
wealth and against nobility is not forced from them 
either by the pressure of famine or the sting of mortified 
pride. These do much and have done much in all ages ; 
but the foundations of society were never yet shaken as 
they are at this day. 

XXX 



The Slavery of Our Times 

" It is not that men are ill-fed, but that they have no 
pleasure in the work by which they make their bread, 
and, therefore, look to wealth as the only means of 
pleasure. 

" It is not that men are pained by the scorn of the upper 
classes, but they cannot endure their own ; for they feel 
that the kind of labour to which they are condemned 
is verily a degrading one, and makes them less than 
men. Never had the upper classes so much sympathy 
with the lower, or charity for them, as they have at this 
day, and yet never were they so much hated by them." 
From " The Stones of Venice" by John Ruskin, Vol. II. , 
Chap. VI., 13-16. 



XXXI 



GOODS-PORTERS WHO WORK 
THIRTY-SEVEN HOURS 



THE SLAVERY OF OUR 
TIMES 

CHAPTER I. 

GOODS-PORTERS WHO WORK THIRTY-SEVEN 
HOURS. 

AN acquaintance of mine who works on the 
Moscow-Kursk Railway as a weigher, in the 
course of conversation mentioned to me that 
the men who load the goods on to his scales 
work for thirty-seven hours on end. 

Though I had full confidence in the speaker's 
truthfulness I was unable to believe him. I 
thought he was making a mistake, or exag- 
gerating, or that I misunderstood something. 

But the weigher narrated the conditions 
under which this work is done so exactly 

3 



The Slavery of Our Times 

that there was no room left for doubt. He 
told me that there are two hundred and fifty 
such goods-porters at the Kursk station in 
Moscow. They were all divided into gangs of 
five men, and were on piece-work, receiving 
from one rouble to iR. 15 (say two shillings to 
two and fourpence, or forty-eight cents to fifty- 
six cents) for one thousand poods (over six- 
teen tons) of goods received or despatched. 

They come in the morning, work for a day 
and a night at unloading the trucks, and in the 
morning, as soon as the night is ended, they 
begin to re-load, and work on for another day. 
So that in two days they get one night's sleep. 

Their work consists of unloading and mov- 
ing bales of seven, eight, and up to ten 
poods (say eighteen, twenty, and up to nearly 
twenty-six stone) . Two men place the bales on 
the backs of the other three who carry them. 
By such work they earn less than a rouble (two 
shillings, or forty-eight cents) a day. They 
work continually, without holiday. 

4 



Goods-Porters 

The account given by the weigher was so 
circumstantial that it was impossible to doubt 
it, but, nevertheless, I decided to verify it with 
my own eyes, and I went to the goods-station. 

Finding my acquaintance at the goods-sta- 
tion, I told him that I had come to see what he 
had told me about. 

" No one I mention it to believes it," 
said I. 

Without replying to me, the weigher called 
to some one in a shed. " Nikita, come here." 

From the door appeared a tall, lean work- 
man in a torn coat. 

" When did you begin work ? " 

" When ? Yesterday morning." 

" And where were you last night? " 

" I was unloading, of course." 

" Did you work during the night ? " asked I. 

" Of course we worked." 

" And when did you begin work to-day? " 

" We began in the morning when else 
should we begin ? " 

5 



The Slavery of Our Times 

" And when will you finish working? " 

" When they let us go ; then we shall fin- 
ish!" 

The four other workmen of his gang came 
up to us. They all wore torn coats and were 
without overcoats, though there were about 
20 Reamur of cold (13 below zero, Fahren- 
heit). 

I began to ask them about the conditions of 
their work, and evidently surprised them by 
taking an interest in such a simple and natural 
thing (as it seemed to them) as their thirty-six 
hour work. 

They were all villagers; for the most part 
fellow-countrymen of my own from Tula; 
some, however, were from Orla, and some 
from Voronesh. They lived in Moscow in 
lodgings, some of them with their families, but 
most of them without. Those who have come 
here alone send their earnings home to the 
village. 

They board with contractors. Their food 

6 



Goods-Porters 

costs them ten roubles (say i is., or five dol- 
lars per month). They always eat meat, dis- 
regarding the fasts. 

Their work always keeps them occupied 
more than thirty-six hours running, because it 
takes more than half an hour to get to their 
lodgings and from their lodgings, and, besides, 
they are often kept at work beyond the time 
fixed. 

Paying for their own food, they earn, by 
such thirty-seven-hour-on-end work, about 
twenty-five roubles a month. 

To my question, why they did such convict 
work, they replied : 

" Where is one to go to ? " 

" But why work thirty-six hours on 
end? Cannot the work be arranged in 
shifts?" 

" We do what we're told to." 

" Yes; but why do you agree to it? " 

" We agree because we have to feed our- 
selves. ' If you don't like it be off ! ' If one's 

I 



The Slavery of Our Times 

even an hour late one has one's ticket shied at 
one and are told to march; and there are ten 
men ready to take the place." 

The men were all young, only one was some- 
what older, perhaps about forty. All their 
faces were lean, and had exhausted, weary 
eyes, as though the men were drunk. The lean 
workman to whom I first spoke struck me 
especially by the strange weariness of his look. 
I asked him whether he had not been drinking 
to-day. 

" I don't drink," answered he, in the de- 
cided way in which men who really do not 
drink always reply to that question. 

" And I do not smoke," added he. 

" Do the others drink? " asked I. 

" Yes ; it is brought here." 

" The work is not light, and a drink always 
adds to one's strength," said the older work- 
man. 

This workman had been drinking that day, 
but it was not in the least noticeable. 
8 



Goods-Porters 

After some more talk with the workmen I 
went to watch the work. 

Passing long rows of all sorts of goods, I 
came to some workmen slowly pushing a 
loaded truck. I learned afterwards that the 
men have to shunt the trucks themselves and to 
keep the platform clear of snow, without being 
paid for the work. It is so stated in the " Con- 
ditions of Pay." These workmen were just as 
tattered and emaciated as those with whom I 
had been talking. When they had moved the 
truck to its place I went up to them and asked 
when they had begun work, and when they had 
dined. 

I was told that they had started work at 
seven o'clock, and had only just dined. The 
work had prevented their being let off sooner. 

" And when do you get away ? " 

" As it happens ; sometimes not till ten 
o'clock," replied the men, as if boasting of their 
endurance. Seeing my interest in their posi- 
tion, they surrounded me, and, probably taking 

9 



The Slavery of Our Times 

me for an inspector, several of them speaking 
at once, informed me of what was evidently 
their chief subject of complaint namely, that 
the apartment in which they could sometimes 
warm themselves and snatch an hour's sleep 
between the day-work and the night-work was 
crowded. All of them expressed great dissat- 
isfaction at this crowding. 

" There may be one hundred men, and no- 
where to lie down ; even under the shelves it is 
crowded," said dissatisfied voices. " Have a 
look at it yourself. It is close here." 

The room was certainly not large enough. 
In the thirty-six-foot room about forty men 
might find place to lie down on the shelves. 

Some of the men entered the room with 
me, and they vied with each other in com- 
plaining of the scantiness of the accommoda- 
tion. 

" Even under the shelves there is nowhere to 
lie down," said they. 

These men, who in twenty degrees of frost, 
10 



Goods-Porters 

without overcoats, carry on their backs twenty- 
stone loads during thirty-six hours; who dine 
and sup not when they need food, but when 
their overseer allows them to eat; living alto- 
gether in conditions far worse than those of 
dray-horses, it seemed strange that these 
people only complained of insufficient accom- 
modation in the room where they warm them- 
selves. But though this seemed to me strange 
at first, yet, entering further into their position, 
I understood what a feeling of torture these 
men, who never get enough sleep, and who are 
half-frozen, must experience when, instead of 
resting and being warmed, they have to creep 
on the dirty floor under the shelves, and there, 
in the stuffy and vitiated air, become yet 
weaker and more broken down. 

Only, perhaps, in that miserable hour of vain 
attempt to get rest and sleep do they painfully 
realise all the horror of their life-destroying 
thirty-seven-hour work, and that is why they 
are specially agitated by such an apparently 
ii 



The Slavery of Our Times 

insignificant circumstance as the overcrowding 
of their room. 

Having watched several gangs at work, and 
having talked with some more of the men and 
heard the same story from them all, I drove 
home, having convinced myself that what my 
acquaintance had told me was true. 

It was true that for money, only enough to 
subsist on, people considering themselves free 
men thought it necessary to give themselves up 
to work such as, in the days of serfdom, not 
one slave owner, however cruel, would have 
sent his slaves to. Let alone slave owners, not 
one cab proprietor would send his horses to 
such work, for horses cost money, and it would 
be wasteful, by excessive, thirty-seven-hour 
work, to shorten the life of an animal of value. 



12 



SOCIETY'S INDIFFERENCE 
WHILE MEN PERISH 



CHAPTER II. 
SOCIETY'S INDIFFERENCE WHILE MEN PERISH. 

To oblige men to work for thirty-seven 
hours continuously without sleep, besides be- 
ing cruel is also uneconomical. And yet such 
uneconomical expenditure of human lives con- 
tinually goes on around us. 

Opposite the house in which I live* is a fac- 
tory of silk goods, built with the latest tech- 
nical improvements. About three thousand 
women and seven hundred men work and live 
there. As I sit in my room now I hear the un- 
ceasing din of the machinery, and know for 
I have been there what that din means. 
Three thousand women stand, for twelve hours 
a day, at the looms amid a deafening roar; 

* This evidently relates to his son's house in Moscow, 
where Tolstoy spends the winter months. Trans. 

15 



The Slavery of Our Times 

winding, unwinding, arranging the silk 
threads to make silk stuffs. All the women 
(except those who have just come from the 
villages) have an unhealthy appearance. Most 
of them lead a most intemperate and immoral 
life. Almost all, whether married or un- 
married, as soon as a child is born to them 
send it off either to the village or to the Found- 
lings' Hospital, where eighty per cent, of these 
children perish. For fear of losing their places 
the mothers resume work the next day, or on 
the third day after their confinement. 

So that during twenty years, to my knowl- 
edge, tens of thousands of young, healthy 
women mothers have ruined and are now 
ruining their lives and the lives of their chil- 
dren in order to produce velvets and silk stuffs. 

I met a beggar yesterday, a young man on 
crutches, sturdily built, but crippled. He 
used to work as a navvy, with a wheelbarrow, 
but slipped and injured himself internally. He 
spent all he had on peasant-women healers 
16 



Society's Indifference 

and on doctors, and has now for eight years 
been homeless, begging his bread, and com- 
plaining that God does not send him death. 

How many such sacrifices of life there are 
that we either know nothing of, or know of, 
but hardly notice, considering them inevi- 
table ! 

I know men working at the blast-furnaces 
of the Tula Iron Foundry who, to have one 
Sunday free each fortnight, will work for 
twenty-four hours that is, after working all 
day they will go on working all night. I have 
seen these men. They all drink vodka to keep 
up their energy, and obviously, like those 
goods-porters on the railway, they quickly 
expend not the interest, but the capital of 
their lives. 

And what of the waste of lives among those 
who are employed on admittedly harmful 
work in looking-glass, cartridge, match, 
sugar, tobacco, and glass factories; in mines 
or as gilders? 

17 



The Slavery of Our Times 

There are English statistics showing that 
the average length of life among people of 
the upper classes is fifty-five years, and the 
average of life among working people in un- 
healthy occupations is twenty-nine years. 

Knowing this (and we cannot help know- 
ing it), we who take advantage of labour that 
costs human lives should, one would think 
(unless we are beasts), not be able to enjoy a 
moment's peace. But the fact is that we 
well-to-do people, liberals and humanitarians, 
very sensitive to the sufferings not of people 
only, but also of animals, unceasingly make 
use of such labour, and try to become more 
and more rich that is, to take more and 
more advantage of such work. And we re- 
main perfectly tranquil. 

For instance, having learned of the thirty- 
seven-hour labour of the goods-porters, and of 
their bad room, we at once send there an in- 
spector, who receives a good salary, and we 
forbid people to work more than twelve hours, 
18 



Society's Indifference 

leaving the workmen (who are thus deprived 
of one-third of their earnings) to feed them- 
selves as best they can; and we compel the 
railway company to erect a large and con- 
venient room for the workmen. Then with 
perfectly quiet consciences we continue to re- 
ceive and despatch goods by that railway, and 
we ourselves continue to receive salaries, divi- 
dends, rents from houses or from land, etc. 
Having learned that the women and girls at 
the silk factory, living far from their families, 
ruin their own lives and those of their children, 
and that a large half of the washerwomen who 
iron our starched shirts, and of the typesetters 
who print the books and papers that wile away 
our time, get consumption, we only shrug our 
shoulders and say that we are very sorry things 
should be so, but that we can do nothing to 
alter it, and we continue with tranquil con- 
sciences to buy silk stuffs, to wear starched 
shirts and to read our morning paper. We are 
much concerned about the hours of the shop 

19 



The Slavery of Our Times 

assistants, and still more about the long hours 
of our own children at school ; we strictly for- 
bid carters to make their horses drag heavy 
loads, and we even organise the killing of cat- 
tle in slaughter-houses, so that the animals 
may feel it as little as possible. But how won- 
derfully blind we become as soon as the ques- 
tion concerns those millions of workers who 
perish slowly, and often painfully, all around 
us, at labours the fruits of which we use for 
our convenience and pleasure ! 



20 



JUSTIFICATION OF THE EX- 
ISTING POSITION BY 
SCIENCE 



'CHAPTER III. 

JUSTIFICATION OF THE EXISTING POSITION BY 
SCIENCE. 

THIS wonderful blindness which befalls 
people of our circle can only be explained by 
the fact that when people behave badly they 
always invent a philosophy of life which repre- 
sents their bad actions to be not bad actions at 
all, but merely results of unalterable laws be- 
yond their control. In former times such aview 
of life was found in the theory that an inscruti- 
ble and unalterable will of God existed which 
foreordained to some men a humble position 
and hard work, and to others an exalted posi- 
tion and the enjoyment of the good things of 
life. 

On this theme an enormous quantity of 

23 



The Slavery of Our Times 

books were written, and an innumerable quan- 
tity of sermons preached. The theme was 
worked up from every possible side. It was 
demonstrated that God created different sorts 
of people slaves and masters; and that both 
should be satisfied with their position. It was 
further demonstrated that it would be better 
for the slaves in the next world; and after- 
wards it was shown that although the slaves 
were slaves and ought to remain such, yet their 
condition would not be bad if the masters 
would be kind to them. Then the very last 
explanation, after the emancipation of the 
slaves,* was that wealth is entrusted by God to 
some people in order that they may use 
part of it in good works, and so there is no 
harm in some people being rich and others 
poor. 

These explanations satisfied the rich and the 

* The serfs in Russia and the slaves in the United 
States of America were emancipated at the same time, 
1861-1864. Trans. 

24 



Justification of the Position 

poor (especially the rich) for a long time. But 
the day came when these explanations became 
unsatisfactory, especially to the poor, who be- 
gan to understand their position. Then fresh 
explanations were needed. And just at the 
proper time they were produced.* These new 
explanations came in the form of science po- 
litical economy, which declared that it had dis- 
covered the laws which regulate division of 
labour and of the distribution of the products 
of labour among men. These laws, according 
to that science, are that the division of labour 
and the enjoyment of its products depend on 
supply and demand, on capital, rent, wages 
of labour, values, profits, etc. ; in general, on 
unalterable laws governing man's economic 
activities. 

Soon, on this theme as many books and 
pamphlets were written and lectures delivered 
as there had been treatises written and religious 

* The first volume of Karl Marx's Kapital appeared 
in 1867. Trans. 

25 



The Slavery of Our Times 

sermons preached on the former theme, and 
still unceasingly mountains of pamphlets and 
books are being written and lectures are being 
delivered; and all these books and lectures are 
as cloudy and unintelligible as the theological 
treatises and the sermons, and they, too, like 
the theological treatises, fully achieve their ap- 
pointed purpose that is, they give such an ex- 
planation of the existing order of things as 
justifies some people in tranquilly refraining 
from labour and in utilising the labour of 
others. 

The fact that, for the investigations of this 
pseudo-science, not the condition of the people 
in the whole world through all historic time 
was taken to show the general order of things, 
but only the condition of people in a small 
country, in most exceptional circumstances 
England at the end of the eighteenth and the 
beginning of the nineteenth centuries* this 

* Compare Walter Bagshot's words : " The world 
which our political economists treat of is a very limited 

26 



Justification of the Position 

fact did not in the least hinder the acceptance 
as valid of the result to which the investigators 
arrived ; any more than a similar acceptance is 
now hindered by the endless disputes and dis- 
agreements among those who study that 
science and are quite unable to agree as to the 
meaning of rent, surplus value, profits, etc. 
Only the one fundamental position of that 
science is acknowledged by all namely, that 
the relations among men are conditioned, not 
by what people consider right or wrong, but by 
what is advantageous for those who occupy an 
advantageous position. 

It is admitted as an undoubted truth that 
if in society many thieves and robbers Have 
sprung up who take from the labourers the 

and peculiar world also. They (people) often imagine 
that what they read is applicable to all states of society 
and to all equally, whereas it is only true of and only 
proved as to states of society in which commerce has 
largely developed, and where it has taken the form of 
development or something near the form which it has 
taken in England " (The Postulates of Political Econ- 
omy). Trans. 

27 



The Slavery of Our Times 

fruits of their labour, this happens not because 
the thieves and robbers have acted badly, but 
because such are the inevitable economic laws, 
which can only be altered slowly by an evolu- 
tionary process indicated by science; and 
therefore, according to the guidance of science, 
people belonging to the class of robbers, thieves 
or receivers of stolen goods may quietly con- 
tinue to utilise the things obtained by thefts 
and robbery. 

Though the majority of people in our world 
do not know the details of these tranquillising 
scientific explanations any more than they for- 
merly knew the details of the theological ex- 
planations which justified their position, yet 
they all know that an explanation exists; that 
scientific men, wise men, have proved convinc- 
ingly, and continue to prove, that the existing 
order of things is what it ought to be, and 
that, therefore, we may live quietly in this 
order of things without ourselves trying to 
alter it. 

28 



Justification of the Position 

Only in this way can I explain the amazing 
blindness of good people in our society who 
sincerely desire the welfare of animals, but yet 
with quiet consciences devour the lives of their 
brother men. 



29 



THE ASSERTION OF ECONOMIC 
SCIENCE THAT RURAL LA- 
BOURERS MUST ENTER THE 
FACTORY SYSTEM 



CHAPTER IV. 




THE theory that it is God's will that some 
people should own others satisfied people for a 
very long time. But that theory, by justifying 
cruelty, caused such cruelty as evoked resist- 
ance, and produced doubts as to the truth of 
the theory. 

So now with the theory that an economic 
evolution is progressing, guided by inevitable 
laws, in consequence of which some people 
must collect capital, and others must labour all 
their lives to increase those capitals, preparing 
themselves meanwhile for the promised com- 
munalisation of the means of production; this 

33 



The Slavery of Our Times 

theory, causing some people to be yet more 
cruel to others, also begins (especially among 
common people not stupefied by science) to 
evoke certain doubts. 

For instance, you see goods-porters destroy- 
ing their lives by thirty-seven hours labour, or 
women in factories, or laundresses, or typeset- 
ters, or all those millions of people who live in 
hard, unnatural conditions of monotonous, 
stupefying, slavish toil, and you naturally ask, 
What has brought these people to such a state ? 
And how are they to be delivered from it? And 
science replies that these people are in this con- 
dition because the railway belongs to this com- 
pany, the silk factory to that gentleman, and 
all the foundries, factories, typographies, and 
laundries to capitalists, and that this state of 
things will come right by work-people form- 
ing unions, co-operative societies, strikes, and 
taking part in government, and more and more 
swaying the masters and the government till 
the workers first obtain shorter hours and in- 

34 



The Factory System 

creased wages, and finally all the means of pro- 
duction will pass into their hands, and then all 
will be well. Meanwhile, all is going on as it 
should go, and there is no need to alter any- 
thing. 

This answer must seem to an unlearned 
man, and particularly to our Russian folk, very 
surprising. In the first place, neither in rela- 
tion to the goods-porters, nor the factory 
women, nor all the millions of other labourers 
suffering from heavy, unhealthy, stupefying 
labour does the possession of the means of pro- 
duction by capitalists explain anything. The 
agricultural means of production of those men 
who are now working at the railway have not 
been seized by capitalists : they have land, and 
horses, and ploughs, and harrows, and all that 
is necessary to till the ground; also these 
women working at the factory are not only not 
forced to it by being deprived of their imple- 
ments of production, but, on the contrary, they 
have (for the most part against the wish of the 

35 



The Slavery of Our Times 

elder members of their families) left the 
homes where their work was much wanted, 
and where they had implements of produc- 
tion. 

Millions of work-people in Russia and in 
other countries are in like case. So that the 
cause of the miserable position of the workers 
cannot be found in the seizure of the means of 
production by capitalists. The cause must lie 
in that which drives them from the villages. 
That, in the first place. Secondly, the eman- 
cipation of the workers from this state of 
things (even in that distant future in which 
science promises them liberty) can be accom- 
plished neither by shortening the hours of la- 
bour, nor by increasing wages, nor by the 
promised communalisation of the means of 
production. 

All that cannot improve their position, for 
the misery of the labourer's position alike on 
the railway, in the silk factory and in every 
other factory or workshop consists not in 

36 



The Factory System 

the longer or shorter hours of work (agricul- 
turalists sometimes work eighteen hours a day, 
and as much as thirty-six hours on end, and 
consider their lives happy ones), nor does it 
consist in the low rate of wages, nor in the fact 
that the railway or the factory is not theirs, 
but it consists in the fact that they are obliged 
to work in harmful, unnatural conditions often 
dangerous and destructive to life, and to live a 
barrack life in towns a life full of temptations 
and immorality and to do compulsory labour 
at another's bidding. 

Latterly the hours of labour have dimin- 
ished and the rate of wages has increased ; but 
this diminution of the hours of labour and this 
increase in wages have not improved the posi- 
tion of the worker, if one takes into account 
not their more luxurious habits watches with 
chains, silk kerchiefs, tobacco, vodka, beef, 
beer, etc. but their true welfare that is, their 
health and morality, and chiefly their freedom. 

At the silk factory with which I am ac- 

37 



The Slavery of Our Times 

quainted, twenty years ago the work was 
chiefly done by men, who worked fourteen 
hours a day, earned on an average fifteen 
roubles a month, and sent the money for the 
most part to their families in the villages. Now 
nearly all the work is done by women working 
eleven hours, some of whom earn as much as 
twenty-five roubles a month (over fifteen 
roubles on the average), and for the most part 
not sending it home, but spend all they earn 
here chiefly on dress, drunkenness and vice. 
The diminution of the hours of work merely 
increases the time they spend in the taverns. 

The same thing is happening, to a greater 
or lesser extent, at all the factories and works. 
Everywhere, notwithstanding the diminution 
of the hours of labour and the increase of 
wages, the health of the operatives is worse 
than that of country workers, the average du- 
ration of life is shorter, and morality is sacri- 
ficed, as cannot but occur when people are torn 
from those conditions which most conduce to 

38 



The Factory System 

morality family life, and free, healthy, varied 
and intelligible agricultural work. 

It is very possibly true that, as some econo- 
mists assert, with shorter hours of labour, 
more pay, and improved sanitary conditions in 
mills and factories, the health of the workers 
and their morality improve in comparison 
with the former condition of factory workers. 
It is possible also that latterly, and in some 
places, the position of the factory hands is bet- 
ter in external conditions than the position of 
the country population. But this is so (and 
only in some places) because the government 
and society, influenced by the affirmation of 
science, do all that is possible to improve the 
position of the factory population at the ex- 
pense of the country population. 

If the condition of the factory workers in 
some places is (though only in externals) bet- 
ter than that of country people, it only shows 
that one can, by all kinds of restrictions, render 
life miserable in what should be the best ex- 

39 



The Slavery of Our Times 

ternal conditions, and that there is no position 
so unnatural and bad that men may not adapt 
themselves to it if they remain in it for some 
generations. 

The misery of the position of a factory 
hand, and in general of a town worker, does 
not consist in his long hours and small pay, but 
in the fact that he is deprived of the natural 
conditions of life in touch with nature, is de- 
prived of freedom, is compelled to compulsory 
and monotonous toil at another man's will. 

And, therefore, the reply to the questions, 
why factory and town workers are in a miser- 
able condition, and how to improve their con- 
dition, cannot be that this arises because cap- 
italists have possessed themselves of the means 
of production, and that the workers' condition 
will be improved by diminishing their hours of 
work, increasing their wages, and communalis- 
ing the means of production. 

The reply to these questions must consist in 
indicating the causes which have deprived the 
40 



The Factory System 

workers of the natural conditions of life in 
touch with nature, and have driven them into 
factory bondage, and in indicating means to 
free the workers from the necessity of fore- 
going a free, country life, and going into 
slavery at the factories. 

And, therefore, the question why town- 
workers are in a miserable condition includes, 
first of all, the question, What reasons have 
driven them from the villages, where they and 
their ancestors have lived and might live, 
where, in Russia, people such as they do now 
live? and, What it is that drove and continues 
to drive them against their will to the factories 
and works ? 

If there are workmen, as in England, Bel- 
gium, or Germany, who for some generations 
have lived by factory work, even they live so 
not at their own free will, but because their 
fathers, grandfathers and great-grandfathers 
were, in some way, compelled to exchange the 
agricultural life which they loved for life 



The Slavery of Our Times 

which seemed to them hard, in towns and at 
factories. First, the country people were de- 
prived of their land by violence, says Karl 
Marx, were evicted and brought to vagabond- 
age, and then, by cruel laws, they were tor- 
tured with pincers, with red-hot irons, and 
were whipped, to make them submit to the con- 
dition of being hired labourers. Therefore, 
the question how to free the workers from 
their miserable position should, one would 
think, naturally lead to the question how to 
remove those causes which have already driven 
some, and are now driving or threatening to 
drive, the rest of the peasants from the position 
which they considered and consider good, and 
have driven and are driving them to a position 
which they consider bad. 

Economic science, although it indicates in 
passing the causes that drove the peasants from 
the villages, does not concern itself with the 
question how to remove these causes, but 
directs all its attention to the improvement of 
42 



The Factory System 

the worker's position in the existing factories 
and works, assuming, as it were, that the work- 
er's position at these factories and workshops 
is something unalterable, something which 
must at all costs be maintained for those who 
are already in the factories, and must absorb 
those who have not yet left the villages or 
abandoned agricultural work. 

Moreover, economic science is so sure that 
all the peasants have inevitably to become fac- 
tory operatives in towns, that though all the 
sages and all the poets of the world have al- 
ways placed the ideal of human happiness in 
the conditions of agricultural work ; though all 
the workers whose habits are unperverted have 
always preferred, and still prefer, agricultural 
labour to any other ; though factory work is al- 
ways unhealthy and monotonous, while agri- 
culture is the most healthy and varied ; though 
agricultural work is free* that is, the peasant 

* In Russia, as in many other countries, the greatef 
part of the agricultural work is done by peasants work- 
ing their own land on their own account. Trans. 

43 



The Slavery of Our Times 

alternates toil and rest at his own will while 
factory work, even if the factory belongs to the 
workmen, is always enforced, in dependence 
on the machines; though factory work is de- 
rivative, while agricultural work is funda- 
mental, and without it no factory could exist 
yet economic science affirms that all the coun- 
try people not only are not injured by the 
transition from the country to the town, but 
themselves desire it and strive towards it. 



44 



WHY LEARNED ECONOMISTS 
ASSERT WHAT IS FALSE 



CHAPTER V. 

WHY LEARNED ECONOMISTS ASSERT WHAT IS 
FALSE. 

HOWEVER obviously unjust may be the as- 
sertion of the men of science that the welfare 
of humanity must consist in the very thing that 
is profoundly repulsive to human feelings in 
monotonous, enforced factory labour the 
men of science were inevitably led to the neces- 
sity of making this obviously unjust assertion, 
just as the theologians of old were inevitably 
led to make the equally evident unjust asser- 
tion that slaves and their masters were crea- 
tures differing in kind, and that the inequality 
of their position in this world would be com- 
pensated in the next. 

The cause of this evidently unjust assertion 
is that those who have formulated, and who 
47 



The Slavery of Our Times 

are formulating, the laws of science belong to 
the well-to-do classes, and are so accustomed 
to the conditions, advantageous for themselves, 
among which they live, that they do not admit 
the thought that society could exist under 
other conditions. 

The condition of life to which people of the 
well-to-do classes are accustomed is that of an 
abundant production of various articles neces- 
sary for their comfort and pleasure, and these 
things are obtained only thanks to the exist- 
ence of factories and works organised as at 
present. And, therefore, discussing the im- 
provement of the workers' position, the men of 
science belonging to the well-to-do classes al- 
ways have in view only such improvements as 
will not do away with the system of factory 
production and those conveniences of which 
they avail themselves. 

Even the most advanced economists the 
Socialists, who demand the complete control of 
the means of production for the workers ex- 
48 



Learned Economists 

pect production of the same or almost of the 
same articles as are produced now to continue 
in the present or in similar factories with the 
present division of labour. 

The difference, as they imagine it, will only 
be that in the future not they alone, but all 
men, will make use of such conveniences as 
they alone now enjoy. They dimly picture to 
themselves that, with the communalisation of 
the means of production, they, too men of 
science, and in general the ruling classes will 
do some work, but chiefly as managers, de- 
signers, scientists or artists. To the questions, 
Who will have .to wear a muzzle and make 
white lead ? Who will be stokers, miners, and 
cesspool cleaners? they are either silent, or 
foretell that all these things will be so im- 
proved that even work at cesspools and under- 
ground will afford pleasant occupation. That 
is how they represent to themselves future eco- 
nomic conditions, both in Utopias such as that 
of Bellamy and in scientific works. 

49 



The Slavery of Our Times 

According to. their theories, the workers will 
all join unions and associations, and cultivate 
solidarity among themselves by unions, strikes, 
and participation in Parliament till they obtain 
possession of all the means of production, as 
well as the land, and then they will be so well 
fed, so well dressed, and enjoy such amuse- 
ments on holidays that they will prefer life in 
town, amid brick buildings and smoking chim- 
neys, to free village life amid plants and do- 
mestic animals; and monotonous, bell-regu- 
lated machine work to the varied, healthy, and 
free agricultural labour. 

Though this anticipation is as improbable 
as the anticipation of the theologians about a 
heaven to be enjoyed hereafter by workmen in 
compensation for their hard labour here, yet 
learned and educated people of our society be- 
lieve this strange teaching, just as formerly 
wise and learned people believed in a heaven 
for workmen in the next world. 

And learned men and their disciples, people 

50 



Learned Economists 

of the well-to-do classes, believe this because 
they must believe it. This dilemma stands be- 
fore them: either they must see that all that 
they make use of in their lives, from railways 
to lucifer matches and cigarettes, represents 
labour which costs the lives of their brother 
men, and that they, not sharing in that toil, but 
making use of it, are very dishonourable men ; 
or they must believe that all that takes place 
takes place for the general advantage in accord 
with unalterable laws of economic science. 
Therein lies the inner psychological cause, 
compelling men of science, men wise and edu- 
cated, but not enlightened, to affirm positively 
and tenaciously such an obvious untruth as that 
the labourers, for their own well-being, should 
leave their happy and healthy life in touch with 
nature, and go to ruin their bodies and souls 
in factories and workshops. 



BANKRUPTCY OF THE SOCIAL- 
IST IDEAL 



CHAPTER VI. 

BANKRUPTCY OF THE SOCIALIST IDEAL. 

BUT even allowing the assertion (evidently 
unfounded as it is, and contrary to the facts of 
human nature) that it is better for people to 
live in towns and to do compulsory machine 
work in factories rather than to live in villages 
and work freely at handicrafts, there remains, 
in the very ideal itself, to which the men of 
science tell us the economic revolution is lead- 
ing, an insoluble contradiction. The ideal is 
that the workers, having become the masters of 
all the means of production, are to obtain all 
the comforts and pleasures now possessed by 
well-to-do people. They will all be well 
clothed, and housed, and well nourished, and 
will all walk on electrically lighted, asphalt 

55 



The Slavery of Our Times 

streets, and frequent concerts and theatres, and 
read papers and books, and ride on motor cars, 
etc. But that everybody may have certain 
things, the production of those things must be 
apportioned, and consequently it must be de- 
cided how long each workman is to work. 

How is that to be decided ? 

Statistics may show (though very imper- 
fectly) what people require in a society fet- 
tered by capital, by competition, and by want. 
But no statistics can show how much is wanted 
and what articles are needed to satisfy the de- 
mand in a society where the means of produc- 
tion will belong to the society itself that is, 
where the people will be free. 

The demands in such a society cannot be de- 
fined, and they will always infinitely exceed the 
possibility of satisfying them. Everybody will 
wish to have all that the richest now possesses, 
and, therefore, it is quite impossible to define 
the quantity of goods that such a society will 
require. 

56 



The Socialist Ideal 

Furthermore, how are people to be induced 
to work at articles which some consider neces- 
sary and others consider unnecessary or even 
harmful ? 

If it be found necessary for everybody to 
work, say six hours a day, in order to satisfy 
the requirements of the society, who in a free 
society can compel a man to work those six 
hours, if he knows that part of the time is spent 
in producing things he considers unnecessary 
or even harmful? 

It is undeniable that under the present state 
of things most varied articles are produced 
with great economy of exertion, thanks to 
machinery, and thanks especially to the 
division of labour which has been brought to 
an extreme nicety and carried to the highest 
perfection, and that those articles are profitable 
to the manufacturers, and that we find them 
convenient and pleasant to use. But the fact 
that these articles are well made and are pro- 
duced with little expenditure of strength, that 

57 



The Slavery of Our Times 

they are profitable to the capitalists and con- 
venient for us, does not prove that free men 
would, without compulsion, continue to pro- 
duce them. There is no doubt that Krupp, 
with the present division of labour, makes ad- 
mirable cannons very quickly and artfully; 
N. M. very quickly and artfully produces silk 
materials; X. Y. and Z. produce toilet scents, 
powder to preserve the complexion, or glazed 
packs of cards, and K. produces whiskey of 
choice flavour, etc. ; and, no doubt, both for 
those who want these articles and for the 
owners of the factories in which they are made 
it is very advantageous. But cannons and 
scents and whiskey are wanted by those who 
wish to obtain control of the Chinese market, 
or who like to get drunk, or are concerned 
about their complexions ; but there will be some 
who consider the production of these articles 
harmful. And there will always be people who 
consider that besides these articles, exhibitions, 
academies, beer and beef are unnecessary and 

58 



The Socialist Ideal 

even harmful. How are these people to be 
made to participate in the production of such 
articles ? 

But even if a means could be found to get all 
to agree to produce certain articles (though 
there is no such means, and can be none, except 
coercion), who, in a free society, without capi- 
talistic production, competition, and its law of 
supply and demand, will decide which articles 
are to have the preference? Which are to be 
made first, and which after? Are we first to 
build the Siberian Railway and fortify Port 
Arthur, and then macadamise the roads in our 
country districts, or vice-versa? Which is to 
come first, electric lighting or irrigation of the 
fields? And then comes another question, in- 
soluble with free workmen, Which men are to 
do which work? Evidently all will prefer 
hay-making or drawing to stoking or cesspool 
cleaning. How, in apportioning the work, are 
people to be induced to agree? 

No statistics can answer these questions. 

59 



The Slavery of Our Times 

The solution can be only theoretical ; it may be 
said that there will be people to whom power 
will be given to regulate all these matters. 
Some people will decide these questions and 
others will obey them. 

But besides the questions of apportioning 
and directing production and of selecting 
work, when the means of production are com- 
munalised, there will be another and most im- 
portant question, as to the degree of division 
of labour that can be established in a socialisti- 
cally organised society. The now existing 
division of labour is conditioned by the neces- 
sities of the workers. A worker only agrees to 
live all his life underground, or to make the 
one hundredth part of one article all his life, or 
to move his hands up and down amid the roar 
of machinery all his life, because he will other- 
wise not have means to live. But it will only 
be by compulsion that a workman, owning the 
means of production and not suffering want, 
can be induced to accept such stupefying and 
60 



The Socialist Ideal 

soul-destroying conditions of labour as those in 
which people now work. Division of labour is 
undoubtedly very profitable and natural to peo- 
ple; but if people are free, division of labour 
is only possible up to a certain very limited 
extent, which has been far overstepped in our 
society. 

If one peasant occupies himself chiefly with 
boot-making, and his wife weaves, and another 
peasant ploughs, and a third is a blacksmith, 
and they all, having acquired special dexterity 
in their own work, afterwards exchange what 
they have produced, such division of labour is 
advantageous to all, and free people will natu- 
rally divide their work in this way. But a 
division of labour by which a man makes one 
one-hundredth of an article, or a stoker works 
in 150 of heat, or is choked with harmful 
gases, such division of labour is disadvan- 
tageous, because though it furthers the pro- 
duction of insignificant articles, it destroys 
that which is most precious the life of man. 
61 



The Slavery of Our Times 

And, therefore, such division of labour as now 
exists can only exist where there is compul- 
sion. Rodbertus* says that communal division 
of labour unites mankind. That is true, but it 
is only free division, such as people voluntarily 
adopt, that unites. 

If people decide to make a road, and one 
digs, another brings stones, a third breaks 
them, etc., that sort of division of work unites 
people. 

But if, independently of the wishes, and 
sometimes against the wishes, of the workers, 
a strategical railway is built, or an Eiffel tower, 
or stupidities such as fill the Paris Exhibition, 
and one workman is compelled to obtain iron, 
another to dig coal, a third to make castings, a 
fourth to cut down trees, and a fifth to saw 
them up, without even having the least idea 
what the things they are making are wanted 
for, then such division of labour not only does 

* A leader of German scientific Socialism (1805-1875). 
Trans. 

62 



The Socialist Ideal 

not unite men, but, on the contrary, it divides 
them. 

And, therefore, with communalised imple- 
ments of production, if people are free, they 
will only adopt division of labour in so far as 
the good resulting will outweigh the evils it 
occasions to the workers. And as each man 
naturally sees good in extending and diversify- 
ing his activities, such division of labour as 
now exists will evidently be impossible in a 
free society. 

To suppose that with communalised means 
of production there will be such an abundance 
of things as is now produced by compulsory 
division of labour is like supposing that after 
the emancipation of the serfs the domestic 
orchestras* and theatres, the home-made car- 
pets and laces and the elaborate gardens which 

* Before the emancipation of the serfs in Russia some 
proprietors had private theatres of their own and trottps 
of musicians and actors composed of their own serfs. 
On many estates the serfs produced a variety of hand- 
made luxuries for their proprietors. Trans. 

63 

* 



The Slavery of Our Times 

depended on serf labour would continue to exist 
as before. So that the supposition that when 
the Socialist ideal is realised every one will be 
free, and will at the same time have at his dis- 
posal everything, or almost everything, that is 
now made use of by the well-to-do classes, in- 
volves an obvious self-contradiction. 



64 



CULTURE OR FREEDOM 



CHAPTER VII. 

V. 

CULTURE OR FREEDOM. 

JUST what happened when serfdom existed 
is now being repeated. Then the majority of 
the serf owners and of people of the well-to-do 
classes, if they acknowledged the serf's posi- 
tion to be not quite satisfactory, yet recom- 
mended only such alterations as would not de- 
prive the owners of what was essential to their 
profit; now, people of the well-to-do classes, 
admitting that the position of the workers is 
not altogether satisfactory, propose for its 
amendment only such measures as will not 
deprive the well-to-do classes of their advan- 
tages. As well-disposed owners then spoke of 
"paternal authority," and, like Gogol,* advised 

* N. V. Gogol (1809-1852), the author of the famous 
"play The Inspector and the celebrated novel Dead Souls. 
Trans. 

6 7 



The Slavery of Our Times 

owners to be kind to their serfs, and to take 
care of them, but would not tolerate the idea 
of emancipation,* considering it harmful and 
dangerous, just so the majority of well-to-do 
people to-day advise employers to look after 
the well-being of their work-people, but do not 
admit the thought of any such alteration of the 
economic structure of life as would set the 
labourers quite free. 

And just as advanced Liberals then, while 
considering serfdom to be an immutable ar- 
rangement, demanded that the government 
should limit the power of the owners, and sym- 
pathised with the serfs' agitation, so the Liber- 
als of to-day, while considering the existing 
order immutable, demand that government 
should limit the powers of capitalists and manu- 
facturers, and they sympathise with unions, 
and strikes, and, in general, with the workers' 



* It should be remembered that Tolstoy himself set 
an example by voluntarily emancipating all his serfs. 
Trans. 

68 



Culture or Freedom 

agitation. And just as the most advanced men 
then demanded the emancipation of the serfs, 
but drew up a project which left the serfs de- 
pendent on private landowners, or fettered 
them with tributes and land taxes, so now the 
most advanced people demand the emancipa- 
tion of the workmen from the power of the 
capitalists, the communalisation of the means 
of production, but yet would leave the workers 
dependent on the present apportionment and 
division of labour, which, in their opinion, 
must remain unaltered. 

The teachings of economic science which are 
adopted, though without closely examining 
their details by all those of the well-to-do 
classes who consider themselves enlightened 
and advanced,* seem on a superficial examina- 

* It should be borne in mind that educated Russians, 
though politically much less free, are intellectually far 
more free than the corresponding section of the English 
population. Views on economics and on religion, which 
are here held only by very advanced people, have been 
popular among Russian university students for a gen- 

6 9 



The Slavery of Our Times 

tion to be liberal and even radical, containing 
as they do attacks on the wealthy classes of so- 
ciety; but essentially that teaching is in the 
highest degree conservative, gross and cruel. 
One way or another the men of science, and in 
their train all the well-to-do classes, wish at all 
cost to maintain the present system of distribu- 
tion and division of labour, which makes pos- 
sible the production of that great quantity of 
goods which they make use of. The existing 
economic order is, by the men of science and, 
following them, by all the well-to-do classes, 
called culture; and in this culture railways, 
telegraphs, telephones, photographs, Rontgen 
rays, clinical hospitals, exhibitions, and, 
chiefly, all the appliances of comfort they see 
something so sacrosanct that they will not al- 
low even a thought of alterations which might 
destroy it all, or but endanger a small part of 
these acquisitions. Everything may, accord- 

eration past. In particular, the doctrines of Karl Marx, 
and of German scientific Socialism in general, have had 
a much wider acceptance there than here. Trans. 

7 



Culture or Freedom 

ing to the teachings of that science, be changed 
except what it calls culture. But it becomes 
more and more evident that this culture can 
only exist while the workers are compelled to 
work. Yet men of science are so sure that this 
culture is the greatest of blessings that they 
boldly proclaim the contrary of what the 
lawyers once said, Fiat justitia, percat mun- 
dus! * They now say, Fiat cultura, per eat 
justitia! 

And they not only say it, but act accordingly. 
Everything may be changed in practice and in 
theory, but not culture; not all that is going 
on in workshops and factories, and certainly 
not what is being sold in the shops. 

But I think that enlightened people, pro- 
fessing the Christian law of brotherhood and 
love to one's neighbour, should say just the 
contrary. 

Electric lights and telephones and exhibi- 
tions are excellent, and so are all the pleasure 

*Let justice be done, though the world perish. 
71 



The Slavery of Our Times 

gardens, with concerts and performances, and 
all the cigars, and match-boxes, and braces, 
and motor cars, but they may all go to per- 
dition, and not they alone, but the railways, 
and all the factory-made chintz stuffs and 
cloths in the world, if to produce them it is 
necessary that ninety-nine per cent, of the peo- 
ple should remain in slavery and perish by 
thousands in factories needed for the produc- 
tion of these articles. If, in order that London 
or Petersburg may be lighted by electricity, or 
in order to construct exhibition buildings, or in 
order that there may be beautiful paints, or in 
order to weave beautiful stuffs quickly and 
abundantly, it is necessary that even a very few 
lives should be destroyed, or ruined, or short- 
ened and statistics show us how many are 
destroyed let London or Petersburg rather be 
lit by gas or oil ; let there rather be no exihibi- 
tion, no paints, or materials, only let there be 
no slavery, and no destruction of human lives 
resulting from it. Truly enlightened people 
72 



Culture or Freedom 

will always agree rather to go back to riding 
on horses and using pack-horses, or even to till- 
ing the earth with sticks or with one's hands, 
than to travel on railways which regularly 
every year crush so many people as is done in 
Chicago merely because the proprietors of 
the railway find it more profitable to compen- 
sate the families of those killed than to build 
the line so that it should not kill people. The 
motto for truly enlightened people is not, Fiat 
cultura pereat justitia, but Fiat justitia, pereat 
cultura. 

But culture, useful culture, will not be de- 
stroyed. It will certainly not be necessary for 
people to revert to tillage of the land with 
sticks or to lighting up with torches. It is not 
for nothing that mankind, in their slavery, 
have achieved such great progress in technical 
matters. If only it is understood that we must 
not sacrifice the lives of our fellow-men for our 
pleasure, it will be possible to apply technical 
improvements without destroying men's lives, 

73 



The Slavery of Our Times 

and to arrange life so as to profit by all such 
methods giving us control of nature as have 
been devised and can be applied without keep- 
ing our brother men in slavery. 



74 



SLAVERY EXISTS AMONG US 



CHAPTER VIII. 

SLAVERY EXISTS AMONG US. 

IMAGINE a man from a country quite differ- 
ent to our own, with no idea of our history or 
of our laws, and suppose that, after showing 
him the various aspects of our life, we were to 
ask him what was the chief difference he 
noticed in the lives of people of our world? 
The chief difference which such a man would 
notice in the way people live is that some people 
a small number who have clean, white 
hands, and are well nourished and clothed and 
lodged, do very little and very light work, or 
even do not work at all, but only amuse them- 
selves, spending on these amusements the re- 
sults of millions of days devoted by other peo- 
ple in severe labour; but other people, always 
dirty, poorly clothed and lodged and fed, with 
dirty, horny hands, toil unceasingly from 

77 



The Slavery of Our Times 

morning to night, and sometimes all night 
long, working for those who do not work, but 
who continually amuse themselves. 

If between the slaves and slave owners of 
to-day it is difficult to draw as sharp a dividing 
line as that which separated the former slaves 
from their masters, and if among the slaves of 
to-day there are some who are only tempo- 
rarily slaves and then become slave owners, or 
some who, at one and the same time, are slaves 
and slave owners, this blending of the two 
classes at their points of contact does not up- 
set the fact that the people of our time are 
divided into slaves and slave owners as defi- 
nitely as, in spite of the twilight, each twenty- 
four hours is divided into day and night. 

If the slave owner of our times has no slave 
John whom he can send to the cesspool, he has 
five shillings, of which hundreds of such Johns 
are in such need that the slave owner of our 
times may choose any one out of hundreds of 
Johns and be a benefactor to him by giving 

78 



Slavery Exists Among Us 

him the preference, and allowing him, rather 
than another, to climb down into the cesspool. 

The slaves of our times are not all those 
factory and workshop hands only who must 
sell themselves completely into the power of 
the factory and foundry owners in order to ex- 
ist, but nearly all the agricultural labourers are 
slaves, working, as they do, unceasingly to 
grow another's corn on another's field, and 
gathering it into another's barn ; or tilling their 
own fields only in order to pay to bankers the 
interest on debts they cannot get rid of. And 
slaves also are all the innumerable footmen, 
cooks, porters, housemaids, coachmen, bath- 
men, waiters, etc., who all their life long per- 
form duties most unnatural to a human being, 
and which they themselves dislike. 

Slavery exists in full vigour, but we do not 
perceive it, just as in Europe at the end of the 
eighteenth century the slavery of serfdom was 
not perceived. 

People of that day thought that the position 

79- 



The Slavery of Our Times 

of men obliged to till the land for their lords, 
and to obey them, was a natural, inevitable, 
economic condition of life, and they did not call 
it slavery. 

It is the same among us : people of our day 
consider the position of the labourer to be a 
natural, inevitable economic condition, and 
they do not call it slavery. 

And as, at the end of the eighteenth century, 
the people of Europe began little by little to 
understand that what formerly seemed a nat- 
ural and inevitable form of economic life 
namely, the position of peasants who were 
completely in the power of their lords was 
wrong, unjust and immoral, and demanded al- 
teration, so now people to-day are beginning 
to understand that the position of hired work- 
men, and of the working classes in general, 
which formerly seemed quite right and quite 
normal, is not what it should be, and demands 
alteration. 

The question of the slavery of our times is 
80 



Slavery Exists Among Us 

just in the same phase now in which the ques- 
tion of serfdom stood in Europe* towards the 
end of the eighteenth century, and in which the 
questions of serfdom among us and of slavery 
in America stood in the second quarter of the 
nineteenth century. 

The slavery of the workers in our time is 
only beginning to be admitted by advanced 
people in our society; the majority as yet are 
convinced that among us no slavery exists. 

A thing that helps people to-day to mis- 
understand their position in this matter is the 
fact that we have, in Russia and in America, 
only recently abolished slavery. But in reality 
the abolition of serfdom and of slavery was 
only the abolition of an obsolete form of slav- 
ery that had become unnecessary, and the 
substitution for it of a firmer form of slavery 
and one that holds a greater number of people 



* I have left the distinction between Europe and 
Russia (quite natural and customary to a Russian 
writer) as it stands in the original. Trans. 

81 



The Slavery of Our Times 

in bondage. The abolition of serfdom and of 
slavery was like what the Tartars of the 
Crimea did with their prisoners. They in- 
vented the plan of slitting the soles of the 
slaves' feet and sprinkling chopped-up bristles 
into the wounds. Having performed that 
operation, they released them from their 
weights and chains. The abolition of serfdom 
in Russia and of slavery in America, though it 
abolished the former method of slavery, not 
only did not abolish what was essential in it, 
but was only accomplished when the bristles 
had formed sores in the soles, and one could be 
quite sure that without chains or weights the 
prisoners would not run away, but would have 
to work. (The Northerners in America boldly 
demanded the abolition of the former slavery 
because among them the new, monetary slav- 
ery had already shown its power to shackle the 
people. The Southerners did not perceive the 
plain signs of the new slavery, and, therefore, 
did not consent to abolish the old form.) 
82 



Slavery Exists Among Us 

Among us in Russia serfdom was only 
abolished when all the land had been appro- 
priated. When land was granted to the peas- 
ants it was burdened with payments, which 
took the place of the land slavery. In Europe 
taxes that kept the people in bondage began to 
be abolished only when the people had lost 
their land, were disaccustomed to agricultural 
work and, having acquired town tastes, were 
quite dependent on the capitalists. 

Only then were the taxes on corn abolished 
in England. And they are now beginning, in 
Germany and in other countries, to abolish the 
taxes that fall on the workers and to shift them 
on to the rich, only because the majority of the 
people are already in the hands of the capital- 
ists. One form of slavery is not abolished until 
another has already replaced it. There are 
several such forms. And if not one, then an- 
other (and sometimes several of these means 
together) keeps a people in slavery that is, 
places it in such a position that one small part 

83 



The Slavery of Our Times 

of the people has full power over the labour 
and the life of a larger number. In this en- 
slavement of the larger part of the people by a 
smaller part lies the chief cause of the miser- 
able condition of the people. And, therefore, 
the means of improving the position of the 
workers must consist in this: First, in admit- 
ting that among us slavery exists not in some 
figurative, metaphorical sense, but in the sim- 
plest and plainest sense; slavery which keeps 
some people the majority in the power of 
others the minority; secondly, having admit- 
ted this, in finding the causes of the enslave- 
ment of some people by others; and thirdly, 
having found these causes, to destroy them. 



84 



WHAT IS SLAVERY? 



CHAPTER IX. 

WHAT IS SLAVERY? 

IN what does the slavery of our time con- 
sist? What are the forces that make some 
people the slaves of others? If we ask all the 
workers in Russia and in Europe and in 
America alike in the factories and in various 
situations in which they work for hire, in 
towns and villages, what has made them choose 
the position in which they are living, they will 
all reply that they have been brought to it 
either because they had no land on which they 
could and wished to live and work (that will 
be the reply of all the Russian workmen and of 
very many of the Europeans), or that taxes, 
direct and indirect, were demanded of them, 
which they could only pay by selling their la- 
bour, or that they remain at factory work en- 

8? 



The Slavery of Our Times 

snared by the more luxurious habits they have 
adopted, and which they can gratify only by 
selling their labour and their liberty. 

The first two conditions, the lack of land and 
the taxes, drive men to compulsory labour; 
while the third, his increased and unsatisfied 
needs, decoy him to it and keep him at it. 

We can imagine that the land may be freed 
from the claims of private proprietors by 
Henry George's plan, and that, therefore, the 
first cause driving people into slavery the lack 
of land may be done away with. With refer- 
ence to taxes (besides the single-tax plan) we 
may imagine the abolition of taxes, or that 
they should be transferred from the poor to the 
rich, as is being done now in some countries; 
but under the present economic organisation 
one cannot even imagine a position of things 
under which more and more luxurious, and 
often harmful, habits of life should not, little 
by little, pass to those of the lower classes who 
are in contact with the rich as inevitably as 



What Is Slavery? 

water sinks into dry ground, and that those 
habits should not become so necessary to the 
workers that in order to be able to satisfy them 
they will be ready to sell their freedom. 

So that this third condition, though it is a 
voluntary one that is, it would seem that a 
man might resist the temptation and though 
science does not acknowledge it to be a cause 
of the miserable condition of the workers, is 
the firmest and most irremovable cause of slav- 
ery. 

Workmen living near rich people always are 
infected with new requirements, and only ob- 
tain means to satisfy these requirements to the 
extent to which they devote their most intense 
labour to this satisfaction. So that workmen 
in England and America, receiving sometimes 
ten times as much as is necessary for subsist- 
ence, continue to be just such slaves as they 
were before. 

Three causes, as the workmen themselves 
explain, produce the slavery in which they live ; 

89 



The Slavery of Our Times 

and the history of their enslavement and the 
facts of their position confirm the correctness 
of this explanation. 

All the workers are brought to their present 
state and are kept in it by these three causes. 
These causes, acting on people from different 
sides, are such that none can escape from their 
enslavement. The agriculturalist who has no 
land, or who has not enough, will always be 
obliged to go into perpetual or temporary 
slavery to the landowner, in order to have the 
possibility of feeding himself from the land. 
Should he in one way or other obtain land 
enough to be able to feed himself from it by 
his own labour, such taxes, direct or indirect, 
are demanded from him that in order to pay 
them he has again to go into slavery. 

If to escape from slavery on the land he 
ceases to cultivate land, and, living on some 
one else's land, begins to occupy himself with 
a handicraft, or to exchange his produce for 
the things he needs, then, on the one hand, 
90 



What Is Slavery? 

taxes, and on the other hand, the competition 
of capitalists producing similar articles to those 
he makes, but with better implements of pro- 
duction, compel him to go into temporary or 
perpetual slavery to a capitalist. If working 
for a capitalist he might set up free relations 
with him, and not be obliged to sell his liberty, 
yet the new requirements which he assimilates 
deprive him of any such possibility. So that 
one way or another the labourer is always in 
slavery to those who control the taxes, the 
land, and the articles necessary to satisfy his 
requirements. 



LAWS CONCERNING TAXES, 
LAND AND PROPERTY 



CHAPTER X. 

LAWS CONCERNING TAXES, LAND AND PROP- 
ERTY. 

THE German Socialists have termed the 
combination of conditions which put the 
worker in subjection to the capitalists the iron 
law of wages, implying by the word " iron" 
that this law is immutable. But in these con- 
ditions there is nothing immutable. These 
conditions merely result from human laws con- 
cerning taxes, land, and, above all, concerning 
things which satisfy our requirements that 
is, concerning property. Laws are framed and 
repealed by human beings. So that it is not 
some sociological " iron law," but ordinary, 
man-made law that produces slavery. In the 
case in hand the slavery of our times is very 
clearly and definitely produced not by some 
" iron" elemental law, but by human enact- 

95 



The Slavery of Our Times 

ments about land, about taxes, and about prop- 
erty. There is one set of laws by which any 
quantity of land may belong to private people, 
and may pass from one to another by inher- 
itance, or by will, or may be sold ; there is an- 
other set of laws by which every one must pay 
the taxes demanded of him unquestioningly ; 
and there is a third set of laws to the effect that 
any quantity of articles, by whatever means 
acquired, may become the absolute property of 
the people who hold them. And in consequence 
of these laws slavery exists. 

We are so accustomed to all these laws that 
they seem to us just as necessary and natural to 
human life as the laws maintaining serfdom 
and slavery seemed in former times; no doubt 
about their necessity and justice seems pos- 
sible, and no one notices nothing wrong in 
them. But just as a time came when people, 
having seen the ruinous consequences of serf- 
dom, questioned the justice and necessity of 
the laws which maintained it, so now, when the 
96 



Taxes, Land and Property 

pernicious consequences of the present eco- 
nomic order have become evident, one invol- 
untarily questions the justice and inevitability 
of the legislation about land, taxes and prop- 
erty which produces these results. 

As people formerly asked, Is it right that 
some people should belong to others, and that 
the former should have nothing of their own, 
but should give all the produce of their labour 
to their owners ? so now we must ask ourselves, 
Is it right that people must not use land ac- 
counted the property of other people ; is it right 
that people should hand over to others, in the 
form of taxes, whatever part of their labour is 
demanded of them? Is it right that people 
may not make use of articles considered to be 
the property of other people? 

Is it right that people should not have the 
use of land when it is considered to belong to 
others who are not cultivating it? 

It is said that this legislation is instituted be- 
cause landed property is an essential condition 

97 



The Slavery of Our Times 

if agriculture is to flourish, and if there were 
no private property passing by inheritance 
people would drive one another from the land 
they occupy, and no one would work or im- 
prove the land on which he is settled. Is this 
true? The answer is to be found in history 
and in the facts of to-day. History shows that 
property in land did not arise from any wish to 
make the cultivator's tenure more secure, but 
resulted from the seizure of communal lands by 
conquerors and its distribution to those who 
served the conqueror. So that property in land 
was not established with the object of stimulat- 
ing the agriculturalists. Present-day facts show 
the fallacy of the assertion that landed property 
enables those who work the land to be sure that 
they will not be deprived of the land they cul- 
tivate. In reality, just the contrary has every- 
where happened and is happening. The right 
of landed property, by which the great propri- 
etors have profited and are profiting most, has 
produced the result that all, or most that is, 
98 



Taxes, Land and Property 

the immense majority of the agriculturalists 
are now in the position of people who cultivate 
other people's land, from which they may be 
driven at the whim of men who do not cul- 
tivate it. So that the existing right of landed 
property certainly does not defend the rights 
of the agriculturalists to enjoy the fruits of the 
labour he puts into the land, but, on the con- 
trary, it is a way of depriving the agricultural- 
ists of the land on which they work and hand- 
ing it over to those who have not worked it; 
and, therefore, it is certainly not a means for 
the improvement of agriculture, but, on the 
contrary, a means of deteriorating it. 

About taxes it is said that people ought to 
pay them because they are instituted with the 
general, even though silent, consent of all, and 
are used for public needs to the advantage of 
all. Is this true? 

The answer to this question is given in his^ 
tory and in present-day facts. History shows 
that taxes never were instituted by common 

99 



The Slavery of Our Times 

consent, but, on the contrary, always only in 
consequence of the fact that some people hav- 
ing obtained power by conquest, or by other 
means over other people, imposed tribute not 
for public needs, but for themselves. And the 
same thing is still going on. Taxes are taken 
by those who have the power of taking them. 
If nowadays some portion of these tributes, 
called taxes and duties, are used for public pur- 
poses, for the most part it is for public purposes 
that are harmful rather than useful to most 
people. 

For instance, in Russia one-third of the rev- 
enue is drawn from the peasants, but only One- 
Fiftieth of the revenue is spent on their great- 
est need, the education of the people ; and even 
that amount is spent on a kind of education 
which, by stupefying the people, harms them 
more than it benefits them. The other Forty- 
nine-Fiftieths are spent on unnecessary things 
harmful for the people, such as equipping the 
army, building strategical railways, forts and 

IOO 



Taxes, Land and Property 

prisons, or supporting the priesthood and the 
Court, and on salaries for military and civil 
officials that is, on salaries for those people 
who make it possible to take this money from 
the people. 

The same thing goes on not only in Persia, 
Turkey and India, but also in all the Christian 
and constitutional states and democratic re- 
publics; money is taken from the majority of 
the people quite independently of the consent 
or non-consent of the payers, and the amount 
collected is not what is really needful, but as 
much as can be got (it is known how Parlia- 
ments are made up, and how little they repre- 
sent the will of the people), and it is used not 
for the common advantage, but for what the 
governing classes consider necessary for them- 
selves on wars in Cuba or the Philippines, on 
taking and keeping the riches of the Transvaal, 
and so forth. So that the explanation that 
people must pay taxes because they are insti- 
tuted with general consent, and are used for 
101 



The Slavery of Our Times 

the common good, is as unjust as the other ex- 
planation that private property in land is estab- 
lished to encourage agriciilture. 

Is it true that people should not use articles 
needful to satisfy their requirements if these 
articles are the property of other people? 

It is asserted that the rights of property in 
acquired articles is established in order to 
make the worker sure that no one will take 
from him the produce of his labour. 

Is this true? 

It is only necessary to glance at what is done 
in our world, where property rights are de- 
fended with especial strictness, in order to be 
convinced how completely the facts of life run 
counter to this explanation. 

In our society, in consequence of property 
rights in acquired articles, the very thing hap- 
pens which that right is intended to prevent 
namely, all articles which have been, and con- 
tinually are being, produced by working people 
are possessed by, and as they are produced are 
1 02 



Taxes, Land and Property 

continually taken by, those who have not pro- 
duced them. 

So that the assertion that the right of prop- 
erty secures to the workers the possibility of 
enjoying the products of their labour is evi- 
dently yet more unjust than the assertion con- 
cerning property in land, and it is based on the 
same sophistry; first, the fruit of their toil is 
unjustly and violently taken from the workers, 
and then the law steps in, and these very ar- 
ticles which have been taken from the work- 
men unjustly and by violence are declared to 
be the absolute property of those who have 
taken them. 

Property, for instance, a factory acquired by 
a series of frauds and by taking advantage of 
the workmen, is considered a result of labour 
and is held sacred ; but the lives of those work- 
men who perish at work in that factory and 
their labour are not considered their property, 
but are rather considered to be the property of 
the factory owner, if he, taking advantage of 
103 



The Slavery of Our Times 

the necessities of the workers, has bound them 
down in a manner considered legal. Hundreds 
of thousands of bushels of corn, collected from 
the peasants by usury and by a series of ex- 
tortions, are considered to be the property of 
the merchant, while the growing corn raised 
by the peasants is considered to be the property 
of some one else if he has inherited the land 
from a grandfather or great-grandfather who 
took it from the people. It is said that the law 
defends equally the property of the mill owner, 
of the capitalist, of the landowner, and of the 
factory or country labourer. The equality of 
the capitalist and of the worker is like the 
equality of two fighters when one has his arms 
tied and the other has weapons, but during the 
fight certain rules are applied to both with 
strict impartiality. So that all the explana- 
tions of the justice and necessity of the three 
sets of laws which produce slavery are as un- 
true as were the explanations formerly given 
of the justice and necessity of serfdom. All 
104 



Taxes, Land and Property 

those three sets of laws are nothing but the 
establishment of that new form of slavery 
which has replaced the old form. As people 
formerly established laws enabling some people 
to buy and sell other people, and to own them, 
and to make them work, and slavery existed, so 
now people have established laws that men may 
not use land that is considered to belong to 
some one else, must pay the taxes demanded 
of them, and must not use articles considered 
to be the property of others and we have the 
slavery of our times. 



105 



LAWS THE CAUSE OF SLAVERY 



CHAPTER XI. 

LAWS THE CAUSE OF SLAVERY. 

THE slavery of our times results from three 
sets of laws those about land, taxes and 
property. And, therefore, all the attempts 
of those who wish to improve the position 
of the workers are inevitably, though un- 
consciously, directed against those three legis- 
lations. 

One set of people repeal taxes weighing on 
the working classes and transfer them on to the 
rich; others propose to abolish the right of 
private property in land, and attempts are be- 
ing made to put this in practice both in New 
Zealand and in one of the American States 
(the limitation of the landlord's rights in Ire- 
land is a move in the same direction) ; a third 
set the Socialists propose to communalise 
the means of production, to tax incomes and 
109 



The Slavery of Our Times 

inheritances, and to limit the rights of capital- 
ist-employers. It would, therefore, seem as 
though the legislative enactments which cause 
slavery were being repealed, and that we may, 
therefore, expect slavery to be abolished in this 
way. But we need only look more closely at 
the conditions under which the abolition of 
those legislative enactments is accomplished or 
proposed to be convinced that not only the 
practical, but even the theoretical projects for 
the improvement of the workers' position are 
merely the substitution of one legislation pro- 
ducing slavery for another establishing a 
newer form of slavery. Thus, for instance, 
those who abolish taxes and duties on the poor, 
first abolishing direct dues and then transfer- 
ring the burden of taxation from the poor to 
the rich, necessarily have to retain, and do re- 
tain, the laws making private property of 
landed property, means of production, and 
other articles, on to which the whole .burden of 
the taxes is shifted. The retention of the laws 
no 



Laws the Cause of Slavery 

concerning land and property keeps the work- 
ers in slavery to the landowners and the cap- 
italists, even though the workers are freed 
from taxes. Those who, like Henry George 
and his partisans, would abolish the laws mak- 
ing private property of land, propose new laws 
imposing an obligatory rent on the land. And 
this obligatory land rent will necessarily create 
a new form of slavery, because a man com- 
pelled to pay rent, or the single tax, may at any 
failure of the crops or other misfortune have to 
borrow money from a man who has some to 
lend, and he will again lapse into slavery. 
Those who, like the Socialists, in theory, wish 
to abolish the legalisation of property in land 
and in means of production, retain the legalisa- 
tion of taxes, and must, moreover, inevitably 
introduce laws of compulsory labour that is, 
they must re-establish slavery in its primitive 
form. 

So that, this way or that way, all the prac- 
tical and theoretical repeals of certain laws 
in 



The Slavery of Our Times 

maintaining slavery in one form have al- 
ways and do always replace it by new legis- 
lation creating slavery in another and fresh 
form. 

What happens is something like what a 
jailer might do who shifted a prisoner's chains 
from the neck to the arms, and from the arms 
to the legs, or took them off and substituted 
bolts and bars. All the improvements that 
have hitherto taken place in the position of the 
workers have been of this kind. 

The laws giving a master the right to com- 
pel his slaves to do compulsory work were re- 
placed by laws allowing the masters to own all 
the land. The laws allowing all the land to be- 
come the private property of the masters may 
be replaced by taxation laws, the control of the 
taxes being in the hands of the masters. The 
taxation laws are replaced by others defending 
the right of private property in articles of use 
and in the means of production. The laws of 
right of property in land and in articles of use 
112 



Laws the Cause of Slavery 

and means of production it is proposed to re- 
place by the enactment of compulsory labour. 

So it is evident that the abolition of one 
form of legalisation producing the slavery of 
our time, whether taxes, or landowning, or 
property in articles of use or in the means of 
production, will not destroy slavery, but will 
only repeal one of its forms, which will imme- 
diately be replaced by a new one, as was the 
case with the abolition of chattel slavery of 
serfdom, and with the repeals of taxes. Even 
the repeal of all three groups of laws together 
will not abolish slavery, but evoke a new and 
as yet unknown form of it, which is now al- 
ready beginning to show itself and to restrain 
the freedom of labour by legislation concern- 
ing the hours of work, the age and state of 
health of the workers, as well as by demanding 
obligatory attendance at schools, deductions 
for old-age insurance or accidents, by all the 
measures of factory inspection, the restrictions 
on co-operative societies, etc. 



The Slavery of Our Times 

All this is nothing but the transference of 
legalisation preparing a new and as yet un- 
tried form of slavery. 

So that it becomes evident that the essence 
of slavery lies not in those three roots of legis- 
lation on which it now rests, and not even in 
such or such other legislative enactments, but 
in the fact that legislation exists ; that there are 
people who have power to decree laws profit- 
able for themselves, and that as long as people 
have that power there will be slavery. 

Formerly it was profitable for people to have 
chattel slaves, and they made laws about chat- 
tel slavery. Afterwards it became profitable 
to own land, to take taxes, and to keep things 
one had acquired, and they made laws corre- 
spondingly. Now it is profitable for people to 
maintain the existing direction and division of 
labour ; and they are devising such laws as will 
compel people to work under the present ap- 
portionment and division of labour. Thus the 
fundamental cause of slavery is legislation, the 
114 



Laws the Cause of Slavery 

fact that there are people who have the power 
to make laws. 

What is legislation? and what gives people 
the power to make laws ? 



THE ESSENCE OF LEGISLA- 
TION IS ORGANISED 
VIOLENCE 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE ESSENCE OF LEGISLATION IS ORGANISED 
VIOLENCE. 

WHAT is legislation? And what enables 
people to make laws ? 

There exists a whole science, more ancient 
and more mendacious and confused than politi- 
cal economy, the servants of which in the 
course of centuries have written millions of 
books ( for the most part contradicting one an- 
other) to answer these questions. But as the 
aim of this science, as of political economy, is 
not to explain what now is and what ought to 
be, but rather to prove that what now is is what 
ought to be, it happens that in this science (of 
jurisprudence) we find very many disserta- 
tions about rights, about object and subject, 
about the idea of a state and other such mat- 
ters which are unintelligible both to the stu- 
119 



The Slavery of Our Times 

dents and to the teachers of this science, but we 
get no clear reply to the question, What is leg- 
islation ? 

According to science, legislation is the ex- 
pression of the will of the whole people ; but as 
those who break the laws, or who wish to break 
them, and only refrain from fear of being pun- 
ished, are always more numerous than those 
who wish to carry out the code, it is evident 
that legislation can certainly not be considered 
as the expression of the will of the whole 
people. 

For instance, there are laws about not injur- 
ing telegraph posts, about showing respect to 
certain people, about each man performing 
military service or serving as a juryman, about 
not taking certain goods beyond a certain 
boundary, or about not using land considered 
the property of some one else, about not mak- 
ing money tokens, not using articles which are 
considered to be the property of others, and 
about many other matters. 
1 20 



The Essence of Legislation 

All these laws and many others are ex- 
tremely complex, and may have been passed 
from the most diverse motives, but not one of 
them expresses the will of the whole people. 

There is but one general characteristic of all 
these laws namely, that if any man does not 
fulfil them, those who have made them will 
send armed men, and the armed men will beat, 
deprive of freedom, or even kill the man who 
does not fulfil the law. 

If a man does not wish to give as taxes 
such part of the produce of his labour as is de- 
manded of him, armed men will come and take 
from him what is demanded, and if he resists 
he will be beaten, deprived of freedom, and 
sometimes even killed. The same will happen 
to a man who begins to make use of land con- 
sidered to be the property of another. The 
same will happen to a man who makes use of 
things he wants, to satisfy his requirements or 
to facilitate his work, if these things are con- 
sidered to be the property of some one else. 
121 



The Slavery of Our Times 

Armed men will come and will deprive him of 
what he has taken, and if he resists they will 
beat him, deprive him of liberty, or even kill 
him. The same thing will happen to any one 
who will not show respect to those whom it is 
decreed that we are to respect, and to him 
who will not obey the demand that he should 
go as a soldier,* or who makes monetary 
tokens. 

For every non-fulfilment of the established 
laws there is punishment: the offender is sub- 
jected by those who make the laws to blows, 
to confinement, or even to loss of life. 

Many constitutions have been devised, be- 
ginning with the English and the American, 
and ending with the Japanese and the Turkish^ 
according to which people are to believe that 
all laws established in their country are estab- 
lished at their desire. But every one knows 



* It must not be forgotten that the conscription, with 
which we in England are only threatened, already exists 
in Russia. Trans. 

122 



The Essence of Legislation 

that not in despotic countries only, but also in 
the countries nominally most free England, 
America, France the laws are made not by 
the will of all, but by the will of those who have 
power; and, therefore, always and everywhere 
are only such as are profitable to those who 
have power, whether they are many, a few, or 
only one man. Everywhere and always the 
laws are enforced by the only means that has 
compelled, and still compels, some people to 
obey the will of others that is, by blows, by 
deprivation of liberty, and by murder. There 
can be no other way. 

It cannot be otherwise; for laws are de- 
mands to execute certain rules; and to compel 
some people to obey certain rules (that is, to do 
what other people want of them) cannot be 
done except by blows, by deprivation of lib- 
erty, and by murder. If there are laws there 
must be the force that can compel people to 
obey them, and there is only one force that can 
compel people to obey rules (that is, to obey 
123 



The Slavery of Our Times 

the will of others), and that is violence; not 
the simple violence which people use to one an- 
other in moments of passion, but the organised 
violence used by people who have power, in 
order to compel others to obey the laws they 
(the powerful) have made; in other words, to 
do their will. 

And so the essence of legislation does not lie 
in the subject or object, in rights or in the idea 
of the dominion of the collective will of the 
people, or in other such indefinite and confused 
conditions; but it lies in the fact that people 
who wield organised violence have the power 
to compel others to obey them and to do as they 
like. 

So that the exact and irrefutable definition 
of legislation, intelligible to all, is that: Laws 
are rules made by people who govern by means 
of organised violence, for non-compliance with 
which the non-complier is subjected to blows, 
to loss of liberty, or even to being murdered. 

This definition furnishes the reply to the 
124 



The Essence of Legislation 

question, What is it that renders it possible for 
people to make laws? The same thing makes 
it possible to establish laws as enforces obe- 
dience to them organised violence. 



125 



WHAT ARE GOVERNMENTS? 



CHAPTER XIII. 

WHAT ARE GOVERNMENTS? IS IT POSSIBLE TO 
EXIST WITHOUT GOVERNMENTS? 

THE cause of the miserable condition of the 
workers is slavery. The cause of slavery is 
legislation. Legislation rests on organised vio- 
lence. 

It follows that an improvement in the con- 
dition of the people is possible only through the 
abolition of organised violence. 

" But organised violence is government, and 
how can we live without governments ? With- 
out governments there will be chaos, anarchy; 
all the achievements of civilisation will perish, 
and people will revert to their primitive bar- 
barism." 

It is usual not only for those to whom the 
existing order is profitable, but even for those 
129 



The Slavery of Our Times 

to whom it is evidently unprofitable, but who 
are so accustomed to it they cannot imagine 
life without governmental violence, to say we 
must not dare to touch the existing order of 
things. The destruction of government will, 
say they, produce the greatest misfortunes 
riot, theft, and murder till finally the worst 
men will again seize power and enslave all the 
good people. 

But not to mention the fact that all that is, 
riots, thefts and murders, followed by the rule 
of the wicked and the enslavement of the good 
all this is what has happened and is happen- 
ing, the anticipation that the disturbance of the 
existing order will produce riots and disorder 
does not prove the present order to be good. 

" Only touch the present order and the 
greatest evils will follow." 

Only touch one brick of the thousand bricks 

piled into a narrow column several yards high 

and all the bricks will tumble down and smash ! 

But the fact that any brick extracted or any 

130 



What Are Governments? 

push administered will destroy such a column 
and smash the bricks certainly does not prove 
it to be wise to keep the bricks in such an un- 
natural and inconvenient position. On the 
contrary, it shows that bricks should not be 
piled in such a column, but that they should be 
rearranged so that they may lie firmly, and so 
that they can be made use of without destroy- 
ing the whole erection. 

It is the same with the present state organi- 
sations. The state organisation is extremely 
artificial and unstable, and the fact that the 
least push may destroy it not only does not 
prove that it is necessary, but, on the contrary, 
shows that, if once upon a time it was neces- 
sary it is now absolutely unnecessary, and is, 
therefore, harmful and dangerous. 

It is harmful and dangerous because the 
effect of this organisation on all the evil that 
exists in society is not to lessen and correct, but 
rather to strengthen and confirm that evil. It 
is strengthened and confirmed by being either 



The Slavery of Our Times 

justified and put in attractive forms or se- 
creted. 

All that well-being of the people which we 
see in so-called well-governed states, ruled by 
violence, is but an appearance a fiction. 
Everything that would disturb the external ap- 
pearance of well-being all the hungry people, 
the sick, the revoltingly vicious are all hidden 
away where they cannot be seen. But the 
fact that we do not see them does not show that 
they do not exist; on the contrary, the more 
they are hidden the more there will be of them, 
and the more cruel towards them will those be 
who are the cause of their condition. It is true 
that every interruption, and yet more, every 
stoppage of governmental action that is, of 
organised violence disturb this external ap- 
pearance of well-being in our life, but such 
disturbance does not produce disorder, but 
merely displays what was hidden, and makes 
possible its amendment. 

Until now, say till almost the end of the 
132 



What Are Governments? 

nineteenth century, people thought and be- 
lieved that they could not live without govern- 
ments. But life flows onward, and the condi- 
tions of life and people's views change. And 
notwithstanding the efforts of governments to 
keep people in that childish condition in which 
an injured man feels as if it were better for 
him to have some one to complain to, people, 
especially the labouring people, both in Europe 
and in Russia, are more and more emerging 
from childhood and beginning to understand 
the true conditions of their life. 

" You tell us but that for you we should be 
conquered by neighbouring nations by the 
Chinese or the Japanese " men of the people 
now say, " but we read the papers, and know 
that no one is threatening to attack us, and that 
it is only you who govern us who, for some 
aims, unintelligible to us, exasperate each 
other, and then, under pretence of defending 
your own people, ruin us with taxes for the 
maintenance of the fleet, for armaments, or 

133 



The Slavery of Our Times 

for strategical railways, which are only re- 
quired to gratify your ambition and vanity; 
and then you arrange wars with one another, 
as you have now done against the peaceful 
Chinese. You say that you defend landed 
property for our advantage; but your defence 
has this effect that all the land either has 
passed or is passing into the control of rich 
banking companies, which do not work, while 
we, the immense majority of the people, are 
being deprived of land and left in the power of 
those who do not labour. You with your laws 
of landed property do not defend landed prop- 
erty, but take it from those who work it. 
You say you secure to each man the produce 
of his labour, but you do just the reverse; all 
those who produce articles of value are, thanks 
to your pseudo-protection, placed in such a 
position that they not only never receive the 
value of their labour, but are all their lives long 
in complete subjection to and in the power of 
non- workers." 

134 



What Are Governments? 

Thus do people, at the end of the century, 
begin to understand and to speak. And this 
awakening from the lethargy in which govern- 
ments have kept them is going on in some 
rapidly increasing ratio. Within the last five 
or six years the public opinion of the common 
folk, not only in the towns, but in the villages, 
and not only in Europe, but also among us in 
Russia, has altered amazingly. 

It is said that without governments we 
should not have those institutions, enlighten- 
ing, educational and public, that are needful 
for all. 

But why should we suppose this? Why 
think that non-official people could not arrange 
their life themselves as well as government 
people arrange it, not for themselves, but for 
others ? 

We see, on the contrary, that in the most 
diverse matters people in our times arrange 
their own lives incomparably better than those 
who govern them arrange for them. Without 

135 



The Slavery of Our Times 

the least help from government, and often in 
spite of the interference of government, people 
organise all sorts of social undertakings 
workmen's unions, co-operative societies, rail- 
way companies, artels,* and syndicates. If 
collections for public works are needed, why 
should we suppose that free people could not 
without violence voluntarily collect the neces- 
sary means, and carry out all that is carried 
out by means of taxes, if only the undertakings 
in question are really useful for everybody? 
Why suppose that there cannot be tribunals 
without violence? Trial by people trusted by 
the disputants has always existed and will 
exist, and needs no violence. We are so de- 
praved by long-continued slavery that we can 
hardly imagine administration without vio- 
lence. And yet, again, that is not true : Russian 
communes migrating to distant regions, where 



* The artel in its most usual form is an association jf 
workmen, or employees, for each of whom the artel is 
collectively responsible. Trans. 



What Are Governments? 

our government leaves them alone, arrange 
their own taxation, administration, tribunals, 
and police, and always prosper until govern- 
ment violence interferes with their administra- 
tion. And in the same way, there is no reason 
to suppose that people could not, by common 
consent, decide how the land is to be appor- 
tioned for use. 

I have known people Cossacks of the Oural 
who have lived without acknowledging 
private property in land. And there was such 
prosperity and order in their commune as does 
not exist in society, where landed property is 
defended by violence. And I now know com- 
munes that live without acknowledging the 
right of individuals to private property. 

Within my recollection the whole Russian 
peasantry did not accept the idea of landed 
property.* 

* Serfdom was legalised about 1597 by Boris Godunof, 
who forbade the peasants to leave the land on which 
they were settled. The peasants' theory of the matter 
was that they belonged to the proprietor, but the land 

137 



The Slavery of Our Times 

The defence of landed property by govern- 
mental violence not merely does not abolish 
the struggle for landed property, but, on the 
contrary, strengthens that struggle, and in 
many cases causes it. 

Were it not for the defence of landed prop- 
erty, and its consequent rise in price, people 
would not be crowded into such narrow spaces, 
but would scatter over the free land, of which 
there is still so much in the world. But as it 
is, a continual struggle goes on for landed 
property ; a struggle with the weapons govern- 
ment furnishes by means of its laws of landed 
property. And in this struggle it is not those 
who work on the land, but always those who 
take part in governmental violence, that have 
the advantage. 

It is the same with reference to things pro- 
belonged to them. " We are yours, but the land is 
ours," was a common saying among them till their 
emancipation under Alexander II., when many of them 
felt themselves defrauded by the arrangement which 
gave half the land to the proprietors. Trans. 

138 



What Are Governments? 

duced by labour. Things really produced by 
a man's own labour, and that he needs, are 
always defended by custom, by public opinion, 
by feelings of justice and reciprocity, and they 
do not need to be protected by violence. 

Tens of thousands of acres of forest-lands 
belonging to one proprietor, while thousands 
of people close by have no fuel, need protection 
by violence. So, too, do factories and works 
where several generations of workmen have 
been defrauded, are still being defrauded. Yet 
more do hundreds of thousands of bushels of 
grain, belonging to one owner, who has held 
them back till a famine has come, to sell them 
at triple price. But no man, however depraved, 
except a rich man or a government official, 
would take from a countryman living by his 
own labour the harvest he has raised or the 
cow he has bred, and from which he gets milk 
for his children, or the sokhds,* the scythes, 

* The sokha is a light plough, such as the Russian 
peasants make and use. Trans. 

139 



The Slavery of Our Times 

and the spades he has made and uses. If even 
a man were found who did take from another 
articles the latter had made and required, such 
a man would rouse against himself such indig- 
nation from every one living in similar circum- 
stances that he would hardly find his action 
profitable for himself. A man so immoral as 
to do it under such circumstances would be 
sure to do it under the strictest system of prop- 
erty defence by violence. It is generally said, 
" Only attempt to abolish the rights of prop- 
erty in land and in the produce of labour, and 
no one will take the trouble to work, lacking 
the assurance that he will not be deprived of 
what he has produced." We should say just 
the opposite: the defence by violence of the 
rights of property immorally obtained, which 
is now customary, if it has not quite destroyed, 
has considerably weakened people's natural 
consciousness of justice in the matter of using 
articles that is, the natural and innate right 
of property .-without which humanity could 
140 



What Are Governments? 

not exist, and which has always existed and 
still exists among all men. 

And, therefore, there is no reason to 
anticipate that people will not be able 
to arrange their lives without organised vio- 
lence. 

Of course, it may be said that horses and 
bulls must be guided by the violence of rational 
beings men; but why must men be guided, 
not by some higher beings, but by people such 
as themselves? Why ought people to be sub- 
ject to the violence of just those people who 
are in power at a given time? What proves 
that these people are wiser than those on whom 
they inflict violence? 

The fact that they allow themselves to use 
violence toward human beings indicates that 
they are not only not more wise, but are less 
wise than those who submit to them. The 
examinations in China for the office of man- 
darin do not, we know, ensure that the wisest 
and best people should be placed in power. 
141 



The Slavery of Our Times 

And just as little is this ensured by inher- 
itance, or the whole machinery of promotions 
in rank, or the elections in constitutional coun- 
tries. On the contrary, power is always seized 
by those who are less conscientious and less 
moral. 

It is said, " How can people live without 
governments that is, without violence?" But 
it should, on the contrary, be asked, " How 
can people who are rational live, acknowledg- 
ing that the vital bond of their social life is 
violence, and not reasonable agreement ? " 

One of two things either people are ra- 
tional or irrational beings. If they are irra- 
tional beings, then they are all irrational, and 
then everything among them is decided by 
violence; and there is no reason why certain 
people should and others should not have a 
right to use violence. And in that case govern- 
mental violence has no justification. But if 
men are rational beings, then their relations 
should be based on reason and not on 
142 



What Are Governments? 

the violence of those who happen to have 
seized power; and, therefore, in that case, 
again, governmental violence has no justifica- 
tion. 



143 



HOW CAN GOVERNMENTS BE 
ABOLISHED ? 



CHAPTER XIV. 

HOW CAN GOVERNMENTS BE ABOLISHED? 

SLAVERY results from laws, laws are made 
by governments, and, therefore, people can 
only be freed from slavery by the abolition of 
governments. 

But how can governments be abolished ? 

All attempts to get rid of governments by 
violence have hitherto, always and everywhere, 
resulted only in this: that in place of the de- 
posed governments new ones established 
themselves, often more cruel than those they 
replaced. 

Not to mention past attempts to abolish gov- 
ernments by violence, according to the Socialist 
theory, the coming abolition of the rule of the 
capitalists that is, the communalisation of 
the means of production and the new economic 
order of society is also to be carried out by a 

147. 



The Slavery of Our Times 

fresh organisation of violence, and will have to 
be maintained by the same means. So that 
attempts to abolish violence by violence neither 
have in the past nor, evidently, can in the fu- 
ture emancipate people from violence nor, con- 
sequently, from slavery. 

It cannot be otherwise. 

Apart from outbursts of revenge or anger, 
violence is used only in order to compel some 
people, against their own will, to do the will of 
others. But the necessity to do what other 
people wish against your own will is slavery. 
And, therefore, as long as any violence, de- 
signed to compel some people to do the will of 
others, exists there will be slavery. 

All the attempts to abolish slavery by vio- 
lence are like extinguishing fire with fire, stop- 
ping water with water, or filling up one hole by 
digging another. 

Therefore, the means of escape from sla- 
very, if such means exist, must be found, not in 
setting up fresh violence, but in abolishing 
148 



Can Governments be Abolished? 

whatever renders governmental violence pos- 
sible. And the possibility of governmental 
violence, like every other violence perpetrated 
by a small number of people upon a larger 
number, has always depended, and still de- 
pends, simply on the fact that the small num- 
ber are armed while the large number are un- 
armed, or that the small number are better 
armed than the large number. 

That has been the case in all the conquests : 
it was thus the Greeks, the Romans, the 
Knights, and Pizarros conquered nations, and 
it is thus that people are now conquered in 
Africa and Asia. And in this same way in 
times of peace all governments hold their sub- 
jects in subjection. 

As of old, so now, people rule over other 
people only because some are armed and others 
are not. 

In olden times the warriors, with their chiefs, 
fell upon the defenceless inhabitants, subdued 
them and robbed them, and all divided the 
149 



The Slavery of Our Times 

spoils in proportion to their participation, 
courage and cruelty; and each warrior saw 
clearly that the violence he perpetrated was 
profitable to him. Now, armed men (taken 
chiefly from the working classes) attack de- 
fenceless people : men on strikes, rioters, or the 
inhabitants of other countries, and subdue 
them and rob them that is, make them yield 
the fruits of their labour not for themselves, 
but for people who do not even take a share in 
the subjugation. 

The difference between the conquerors and 
the governments is only that the conquerors 
have themselves, with their soldiers, attacked 
the unarmed inhabitants and have, in cases of 
insubordination, carried their threats to tor- 
ture and to kill into execution; while the gov- 
ernments, in cases of insubordination, do not 
themselves torture or execute the unarmed in- 
habitants, but oblige others to do it who have 
been deceived and specially brutalised for the 
purpose, and who are chosen from among the 



Can Governments be Abolished? 

very people on whom the government inflicts 
violence. 

Thus, violence was formerly inflicted by per- 
sonal effort, by the courage, cruelty and agility 
of the conquerors themselves, but now violence 
is inflicted by means of fraud. 

So that if formerly, in order to get rid of 
armed violence, it was necessary to arm one's 
self and to oppose armed violence by armed vio- 
lence, now when people are subdued, not by 
direct violence, but by fraud, in order to abol- 
ish violence it is only necessary to expose the 
deception which enables a small number of 
people to exercise violence upon a larger num- 
ber. 

The deception by means of which this is 
done consists in the fact that the small number 
who rule, on obtaining power from their pred- 
ecessors, who were installed by conquest, say 
to the majority : " There are a lot of you, but 
you are stupid and uneducated, and cannot 
either govern yourselves or organise your pub- 



The Slavery of Our Times 

lie affairs, and, therefore, we will take those 
cares on ourselves; we will protect you from 
foreign foes, and arrange and maintain internal 
peace among you; we will set up courts of jus- 
tice, arrange for you and take care of public 
institutions schools, roads, and the postal ser- 
vice and in general we will take care of your 
well-being; and in return for all this you only 
have to fulfil those slight demands which we 
make, and, among other things, you must give 
into our complete control a small part of your 
incomes, and you must yourselves enter the 
armies which are needed for your own safety 
and government. 

And most people agree to this, not because 
they have weighed the advantages and disad- 
vantages of these conditions (they never have 
a chance to do that), but because from their 
very birth they have found themselves in con- 
ditions such as these. 

If doubts suggest themselves to some people 
as to whether all this is necessary, each one 

152 



Can Governments be Abolished? 

thinks only about himself, and fears to suffer 
if he refuses to accept these conditions; each 
one hopes to tal^e advantage of them for his 
own profit, and every one agrees, thinking that 
by paying a small part of his means to the gov- 
ernment, and by consenting to military ser- 
vice, he cannot do himself very much harm. 
But, in reality, submission to the demands of 
government deprives him of all that is valuable 
in human life. 

And when the soldiers are enrolled, and 
hired, and armed, they are subjected to a 
special training called discipline, introduced in 
recent times, since soldiers have ceased to share 
the plunder. 

Discipline consists in this, that by complex 
and artful methods, which have been perfected 
in the course of ages, people who are subjected 
to this training and remain under it for some 
time are completely deprived of man's chief 
attribute, rational freedom, and become sub- 
missive, machine-like instruments of murder in 

153 



The Slavery of Our Times 

the hands of their organised hierarchical 
stratocracy. And it is in this disciplined army 
that the essence of the frau^l dwells which 
gives to modern governments dominion over 
the peoples. 

As soon as the government has the money 
and the soldiers, instead of fulfilling their 
promises to defend their subjects from foreign 
enemies, and to arrange things for their ben- 
efit, they do all they can to provoke the neigh- 
bouring nations and to produce war ; and they 
not only do not promote the internal well-be- 
ing of their people, but they ruin and corrupt 
them. 

In the Arabian Nights there is a story of a 
traveller who, being cast upon an uninhabited 
island, found a little old man with withered 
legs sitting on the ground by the side of a 
stream. The old man asked the traveller to 
take him on his shoulder and to carry him over 
the stream. The traveller consented; but no 
sooner was the old man settled on the travel- 

154 



Can Governments be Abolished? 

ler's shoulders than the former twined his legs 
round the latter's neck and would not get off 
again. Having control of the traveller, the old 
man drove him about as he liked, plucked fruit 
from the trees and ate it himself, not giving 
any to his bearer, and abused him in every way. 
This is just what happens with the people 
who give soldiers and money to the govern- 
ments. With the money the governments buy 
guns and hire or train up by education sub- 
servient, brutalised military commanders. And 
these commanders, by means of an artful sys- 
tem of stupefaction, perfected in the course of 
ages and called discipline, make those who 
have been taken as soldiers into a disciplined 
army. When the governments have in their 
power this instrument of violence and murder, 
that possesses no will of its own, the whole 
people are in their hands, and they do not let 
them go again, and not only prey upon them, 
but also abuse them, instilling into the people, 
by means of a pseudo-religious and patriotic 

155 



The Slavery of Our Times 

education, loyalty to and even adoration of 
themselves that is, of the very men who keep 
the whole people in slavery and torment them. 

It is not for nothing that all the kings, em- 
perors, and presidents esteem discipline so 
highly, are so afraid of any breach of dis- 
cipline, and attach the highest importance 
to reviews, manoeuvres, parades, ceremonial 
marches and other such nonsense. They know 
that it all maintains discipline, and that not 
only their power, but their very existence de- 
pends on discipline. 

A disciplined army is not even required for 
a defensive war, as has often been shown in 
history and as was again demonstrated the 
other day in South Africa. A disciplined army 
is only needed for conquest that is, for rob- 
bery, or for fratricide or parricide, as was ex- 
pressed by that most stupid or insolent of 
crowned personages, William II., who made 
a speech to his recruits telling them they had 
sworn obedience to him, and ought to be ready 

156 



Can Governments be Abolished? 

to kill their own brothers and fathers should he 
desire it. Disciplined armies are the means by 
which they, without using their own hands, 
accomplish the greatest atrocities, the possi- 
bility of perpetrating which gives them power 
over the people. 

And, therefore, the only means to destroy 
governments is not force, but it is the exposure 
of this fraud. It is necessary people should 
understand: First, that in Christendom there 
is no need to protect the peoples one from an- 
other; that all the enmity of the peoples, one 
to another, are produced by the governments 
themselves, and that armies are only needed 
by the small number of those who rule ; for the 
people it is not only unnecessary, but it is in 
the highest degree harmful, serving as the in- 
strument to enslave them. Secondly, it is 
necessary that people should understand that 
the discipline which is so highly esteemed by 
all the governments is the greatest of crimes 
that man can commit, and is a clear indication 

157 



The Slavery of Our Times 

of the criminality of the aims of governments. 
Discipline is the suppression of reason and of 
freedom in man, and can have no other aim 
than preparation for the performance of crimes 
such as no man can commit while in a normal 
condition. It is not even needed for war, when 
the war is defensive and national, as the Boers 
have recently shown. It is wanted and wanted 
only for the purpose indicated by William II. 
for the committal of the greatest crimes, frat- 
ricide and parricide. 

The terrible old man who sat on the travel- 
ler's shoulders behaved in the same way : he 
mocked him and insulted him, knowing that as 
long as he sat on the traveller's neck the latter 
was in his power. 

And it is just this fraud, by means of which 
a small number of unworthy people, called the 
government, have power over the people, and 
not only impoverish them, but do what is the 
most harmful of all actions pervert whole 
generations from childhood upwards just this 

158 



Can Governments be Abolished? 

terrible fraud which should be exposed, in or- 
der that the abolition of government and of 
the slavery that results from it may become 
possible. 

The German writer Eugen Schmitt, in the 
newspaper Ohne Staat, that he published in 
Buda-Pesth, wrote an article that was pro- 
foundly true and bold, not only in expression, 
but in thought. In it he showed that govern- 
ments, justifying their existence on the ground 
that they ensure a certain kind of safety to their 
subjects, are like the Calabrian robber-chief 
who collected a regular tax from all who 
wished to travel in safety along the highways. 
Schmitt was committed for trial for that ar- 
ticle, but was acquitted by the jury. 

We are so hypnotised by the governments 
that such a comparison seems to us an exagger- 
ation, a paradox, or a joke ; but in reality it is 
not a paradox or a joke ; the only inaccuracy in 
the comparison is that the activity of all the 
governments is many times more inhuman 

159 



The Slavery of Our Times 

and, above all, more harmful than the activity 
of the Calabrian robber. 

The robber generally plundered the rich, the 
governments generally plunder the poor and 
protect those rich who assist in their crimes. 
The robber doing his work risked his life, while 
the governments risk nothing, but base their 
whole activity on lies and deception. The robber 
did not compel any one to join his band, the 
governments generally enrol their soldiers by 
force. All who paid the tax to the robber had 
equal security from danger. But in the state, 
the more any one takes part in the organised 
fraud the more he receives not merely of pro- 
tection, but also of reward. Most of all, the 
emperors, kings and presidents are protected 
(with their perpetual body-guards), and they 
can spend the largest share of the money col- 
lected from the taxpaying subjects; next in 
the scale of participation in the governmental 
crimes come the commanders-in-chief, the min- 
isters, the heads of police, governors, and so 
1 60 



Can Governments be Abolished? 

on, down to the policemen, who are least pro- 
tected, and who receive the smallest salaries of 
all. Those who do not take any part in the 
crimes of government, who refuse to serve, to 
pay taxes, or to go to law, are subjected to vio- 
lence, as among the robbers. The robber does 
not intentionally vitiate people, but the gov- 
ernments, to accomplish their ends, vitiate 
whole generations from childhood to manhood 
with false religions and patriotic instruction. 
Above all, not even the most cruel robber, no 
Stenka Razin,* no Cartouche,f can be com- 
pared for cruelty, pitilessness and ingenuity in 
torturing, I will not say with the villain kings 
notorious for their cruelty John the Terrible, 
Louis XL, the Elizabeths, etc. but even with 
the present constitutional and liberal govern- 
ments, with their solitary cells, disciplinary bat- 

* The Cossack leader of a formidable insurrection in 
the latter half of the seventeenth century. Trans, 

t The chief of a Paris band of robbers in the early 
years of the eighteenth century. Trans. 

161 



The Slavery of Our Times 

talions, suppressions of revolts, and their mas- 
sacres in war. 

Towards governments, as towards churches, 
it is impossible to feel otherwise than with ven- 
eration or aversion. Until a man has under- 
stood what a government is and until he has 
understood what a church is he cannot but feel 
veneration towards those institutions. As 
long as he is guided by them his vanity 
makes it necessary for him to think that what 
guides him is something primal, great and 
holy; but as soon as he understands that what 
guides him is not something primal and holy, 
but that it is a fraud carried out by unworthy 
people, who, under the pretence of guiding 
him, make use of him for their own personal 
ends, he cannot but at once feel aversion 
towards these people, and the more important 
the side of his life that has been guided the 
more aversion will he feel. 

People cannot but feel this when they have 
understood what governments are. 
162 



Can Governments be Abolished? 

People must feel that their participation in 
the criminal activity of governments, whether 
by giving part of their work in the form of 
money, or by direct participation in military 
service, is not, as is generally supposed, an in- 
different action, but, besides being harmful to 
one's self and to one's brothers, is a participa- 
tion in the crimes unceasingly committed by all 
governments and a preparation for new crimes, 
which governments are always preparing by 
maintaining disciplined armies. 

The age of veneration for governments, not- 
withstanding all the hypnotic influence they 
employ to maintain their position, is more and 
more passing away. And it is time for people 
to understand that governments not only are 
not necessary, but are harmful and most highly 
immoral institutions, in which a self-respect- 
ing, honest man cannot and must not take part, 
and the advantages of which he cannot and 
should not enjoy. 

And as soon as people clearly understand 
163 



The Slavery of Our Times 

that, they will naturally cease to take part in 
such deeds that is, cease to give the govern- 
ments soldiers and money. And as soon as a 
majority of people ceases to do this the fraud 
which enslaves people will be abolished. Only 
in this way can people be freed from slavery. 



164 



WHAT SHOULD EACH 

MAN DO? 



CHAPTER XV. 

WHAT SHOULD EACH MAN DO? 

" BUT all these are general considerations, 
and whether they are correct or not, they are 
inapplicable to life," will be the remark made 
by people accustomed to their position, and 
who do not consider it possible, or who do not 
wish, to change it. 

" Tell us what to do, and how to organise 
society," is what people of the well-to-do 
classes usually say. 

People of the well-to-do classes are so accus- 
tomed to their role of slave owners that when 
there is talk of improving the workers' condi- 
tion, they at once begin, like our serf owners 
before the emancipation, to devise all sorts of 
plans for their slaves; but it never occurs to 
167 



The Slavery of Our Times 

them that they have no right to dispose of 
other people, and that if they really wish to do 
good to people, the one thing they can and 
should do is to cease to do the evil they are now 
doing. And the evil they do is very definite 
and clear. It is not merely that they employ 
compulsory slave labour, and do not wish to 
cease from employing it, but that they also take 
part in establishing and maintaining this com- 
pulsion of labour. That is what they should 
cease to do. 

The working people are also so perverted by 
their compulsory slavery that it seems to most 
of them that if their position is a bad one, it 
is the fault of the masters, who pay them too 
little and who own the means of production. 
It does not enter their heads that their bad 
position depends entirely on themselves, and 
that if only they wish to improve their own 
and their brothers' positions, and not merely 
each to do the best he can for himself, the great 
thing for them to do is themselves to cease to 
168 



What Should Each Man Do? 

do evil. And the evil that they do is that, de- 
siring to improve their material position by the 
same means which have brought them into 
bondage, the workers (for the sake of satisfy- 
ing the habits they have adopted), sacrificing 
their human dignity and freedom, accept 
humiliating and immoral employment or 
produce unnecessary and harmful articles, 
and, above all, they maintain governments, 
taking part in them by paying taxes and 
by direct service, and thus they enslave them- 
selves. 

In order that the state of things may be im- 
proved, both the well-to-do classes and the 
workers must understand that improvement 
cannot be effected by safeguarding one's own 
interests. Service involves sacrifice, and, there- 
fore, if people really wish to improve the posi- 
tion of their brother men, and not merely their 
own, they must be ready not only to alter the 
way of life to which they are accustomed, and 
to lose those advantages which they have held, 
169 



The Slavery of Our Times 

but they must be ready for an intense struggle, 
not against governments, but against them- 
selves and their families, and must be ready to 
suffer persecution for non-fulfilment of the 
demands of government. 

And, therefore, the reply to the question, 
What is it we must do ? is very simple, and not 
merely definite, but always in the highest 
degree applicable and practicable for each man, 
though it is not what is expected by those who, 
like people of the well-to-do classes, are fully 
convinced that they are appointed to correct 
not themselves (they are already good), but 
to teach and correct other people ; and by those 
who, like the workmen, are sure that not they 
(but only the capitalists) are in fault for their 
present bad position, and think that things 
can only be put right by taking from the 
capitalists the things they use, and arranging 
so that all might make use of those conven- 
iences of life which are now only used by the 
rich. The answer is very definite, applicable, 
170 



What Should Each Man Do? 

and practicable, for it demands the activity 
of that one person over whom each of us 
has real, rightful, and unquestionable power 
namely, one's self and it consists in this, 
that if a man, whether slave or slave owner, 
really wishes to better not his position alone, 
but the position of people in general, he must 
not himself do those wrong things which en- 
slave him and his brothers. 

And in order not to do the evil which pro- 
duces misery for himself and for his brothers, 
he should, first of all, neither willingly nor 
under compulsion take any part in govern- 
mental activity, and should, therefore, be 
neither a soldier, nor a field-marshal, nor a 
minister of state, nor a tax collector, nor a wit- 
ness, nor an alderman, nor a juryman, nor 
a governor, nor a member of Parliament, nor, 
in fact, hold any office connected with violence. 
That is one thing. 

Secondly, such a man should not voluntarily 
pay taxes to governments, either directly or 
171 



The Slavery of Our Times 

indirectly; nor should he accept money col- 
lected by taxes, either as salary, or as pension, 
or as a reward; nor should he make use of 
governmental institutions, supported by taxes 
collected by violence from the people. That is 
the second thing. 

Thirdly, a man wno desires not to promote 
his own well-being alone, but to better the 
position of people in general, should not appeal 
to governmental violence for the protection of 
his own possessions in land or in other things, 
nor to defend him and his near ones; but 
should only possess land and all products of his 
own or other people's toil in so far as others 
do not claim them from him. 

But such an activity is impossible; to refuse 
all participation in governmental affairs means 
to refuse to live, is what people will say. A 
man who refuses military service will be im- 
prisoned; a man who does not pay taxes will 
be punished and the tax will be collected from 
his property; a man who, having no other 
172 



What Should Each Man Do? 

means of livelihood, refuses government ser- 
vice, will perish of hunger with his family ; the 
same will befall a man who rejects govern- 
mental protection for his property and his 
person; not to make use of things that are 
taxed or of government institutions, is quite 
impossible, as the most necessary articles are 
often taxed; and just in the same way it is 
impossible to do without government institu- 
tions, such as the post, the roads, etc. 

It is quite true that it is difficult for a man 
of our times to stand aside from all participa- 
tion in governmental violence. But the fact 
that not every one can so arrange his life as 
not to participate in some degree in govern- 
mental violence does not at all show that it is 
not possible to free one's self from it more and 
more. Not every man will have the strength 
to refuse conscription (though there are and 
will be such men), but each man can abstain 
from voluntarily entering the army, the police 
force, and the judicial or revenue service; and 

173 



The Slavery of Our Times 

can give the preference to a worse paid private 
service rather than to a better paid public ser- 
vice. Not every man will have the strength 
to renounce his landed estates (though there 
are people who do that), but every man can, 
understanding the wrongfulness of such prop- 
erty, diminish its extent. Not every man can 
renounce the possession of capital (there are 
some who do) or the use of articles defended 
by violence, but each man can, by diminishing 
his own requirements, be less and less in need 
of articles which provoke other people to envy. 
Not every official can renounce his government 
salary (though there are men who prefer hun- 
ger to dishonest governmental employment), 
but every one can prefer a smaller salary to a 
larger one for the sake of having duties less 
bound up with violence; not every one can 
refuse to make use of government schools 
(though there are some who do), but every 
one can give the preference to private schools, 
and each can make less and less use of articles 
174 



What Should Each Man Do? 

that are taxed, and of government institu- 
tions.* 

Between the existing order, based on brute 
force, and the ideal of a society based on rea- 
sonable agreement confirmed by custom, there 
are an infinite number of steps, which mankind 
are ascending, and the approach to the ideal is 
only accomplished to the extent to which 
people free themselves from participation in 
violence, from taking advantage of it, and 
from being accustomed to it. 

We do not know and cannot see, still less, 
like the pseudo-scientific men, foretell, in what 
way this gradual weakening of governments 
and emancipation of people will come about; 
nor do we know what new forms man's life 
will take as the gradual emancipation pro- 

* With reference to schools, the circumstances are 
different in Russia to what they are in England. Free 
England has compulsory education; Russia has not. 
But in Russia the government hinders the establishment 
of private schools, and reduces even the universities to 
the position of government institutions watched by spies. 
Trans. 

175 



The Slavery of Our Times 

grasses, but we certainly do know that the life 
of people who, having understood the criminal- 
ity and harmfulness of the activity of govern- 
ments, strive not to make use of them, or to 
take part in them, will be quite different and 
more in accord with the law of life and our 
own consciences than the present life, in which 
people themselves participating in govern- 
mental violence and taking advantage of it, 
make a pretence of struggling against it, and 
try to destroy the old violence by new violence. 
The chief thing is that the present arrange- 
ment of life is bad; about that all are agreed. 
The cause of the bad conditions and of the 
existing slavery lies in the violence used by 
governments. There is only one way to abol- 
ish governmental violence: that people should 
abstain from participating in violence. And, 
therefore, whether it be difficult or not, to 
abstain from participating in governmental 
violence, and whether the good results of such 
abstinence will or will not be soon apparent, 
176 



What Should Each Man Do? 

are superfluous questions; because to liberate 
people from slavery there is only that one way, 
and no other ! 

To what extent and when voluntary agree- 
ment, confirmed by custom, will replace vio- 
lence in each society and in the whole world 
will depend on the strength and clearness of 
people's consciousness and on the number of 
individuals who make this consciousness their 
own. Each of us is a separate person, and each 
can be a participator in the general movement 
of humanity by his greater or lesser clearness 
of recognition of the aim before us, or he can 
be an opponent of progress. Each will have 
to make his choice : to oppose the will of God, 
building upon the sands the unstable house of 
his brief, illusive life, or to join in the eternal, 
deathless movement of true life in accordance 
with God's will. 

But perhaps I am mistaken, and the right 
conclusions to draw from human history are 
these, and the human race is not moving 
177 



The Slavery of Our Times 

toward emancipation from slavery; perhaps it 
can be proved that violence is a needful factor 
of progress, and that the state, with its vio- 
lence, is a necessary form of life, and that it 
will be worse for people if governments are 
abolished and if the defence of our persons and 
property is abolished. 

Let us grant it to be so, and say that all the 
foregoing reasoning is wrong; but besides the 
general considerations about the life of human- 
ity, each man has also to face the question of 
his own life; and notwithstanding any consid- 
erations about the general laws of life, a man 
cannot do what he admits to be not merely 
harmful, but wrong. 

" Very possibly the reasonings showing the 
state to be a necessary form of the development 
of the individual, and governmental violence 
to be necessary for the good of society, can all 
be deduced from history, and are all correct," 
each honest and sincere man of our times will 
reply ; " but murder is an evil, that I know 
178 



What Should Each Man Do ? 

more certainly than any reasonings; by de- 
manding that I should enter the army or pay 
for hiring and equipping soldiers, or for buy- 
ing cannons and building ironclads, you wish 
to make me an accomplice in murder, and that 
I cannot and will not be. Neither do I wish, 
nor can I, make use of money you have col- 
lected from hungry people with threats of 
murder; nor do I wish to make use of land or 
capital defended by you, because I know that 
your defence rests on murder. 

" I could do these things when I did not 
understand all their criminality, but when I 
have once seen it, I cannot avoid seeing it, and 
can no longer take part in these things. 

" I know that we are all so bound up by 
violence that it is difficult to avoid it altogether, 
but I will, nevertheless, do all I can not to take 
part in it ; I will not be an accomplice to it, and 
will try not to make use of what is obtained 
and defended by murder. 

" I have but one life, and why should I, in 
179 



The Slavery of Our Times 

this brief life of mine, act contrary to the voice 
of conscience and become a partner in your 
abominable deeds? 

" I cannot, and I will not. 

" And what will come of this ? I do not 
know. Only I think no harm can result from 
acting as my conscience demands." 

So in our time should each honest and sin- 
cere man reply to all the arguments about the 
necessity of governments and of violence, and 
to every demand or invitation to take part in 
them. 

So that the supreme and unimpeachable 
judge the voice of conscience confirms to 
each man the conclusion to which also general 
reasoning should bring us. 



1 80 



AN AFTERWORD 



AN AFTERWORD. 

BUT this is again the same old sermon: on 
the one hand, urging the destruction of the 
present order of things without putting any- 
thing in its place ; on the other hand, exhorting 
to non-action, is what many will say on read- 
ing what I have written. " Governmental 
action is bad, so is the action of the landowner 
and of the man of business ; equally bad is the 
activity of the Socialist and of the revolution- 
ary Anarchists that is to say, all real, practical 
activities are bad, and only some sort of moral, 
spiritual, indefinite activity which brings every- 
thing to utter chaos and inaction is good." 
Thus I know many serious and sincere people 
will think and speak ! 

What seems to people most disturbing in the 
idea of no violence is that property will not be 
protected, and that each man will, therefore, 

183 



The Slavery of Our Times 

be able to take from another what he needs or 
merely likes, and to go unpunished. To people 
accustomed to the defence of property and 
person by violence it seems that without such 
defence there will be perpetual disorder, a con- 
stant struggle of every one against every one 
else. 

I will not repeat what I have said elsewhere 
to show that the defence of property by vio- 
lence does not lessen, but increases, this dis- 
order. But allowing that in the absence of 
defence disorder may occur, what are people 
to do who have understood the cause of the 
calamities from which they are suffering? 

If we have understood that we are ill from 
drunkenness, we must continue to drink, hop- 
ing to mend matters by drinking moderately, 
or continue drinking and take medicines that 
shortsighted doctors give us. 

And it is the same with our social sickness. 
If we have understood that we are ill because 
some people use violence to others, it is im- 
184 



An Afterword 

possible to improve the position of society 
either by continuing to support the govern- 
mental violence that exists, or by introducing 
a fresh kind of revolutionary or socialist vio- 
lence. That might have been done as long as 
the fundamental cause of people's misery was 
not clearly seen. But as soon as it has become 
indubitably clear that people suffer from the 
violence done by some to others, it is already 
impossible to improve the position by continu- 
ing the old violence or by introducing a new 
kind. The sick man suffering from alcoholism 
has but one way to be cured: by refraining 
from intoxicants which are the cause of his 
illness; so there is only one way to free men 
from the evil arrangement of society that is, 
to refrain from violence the cause of the 
suffering from personal violence, from 
preaching violence, and from in any way jus- 
tifying violence. 

And not only is this the sole means to de- 
liver people from their ills, but we must also 

185 



The Slavery of Our Times 

adopt it because it coincides with the moral 
consciousness of each individual man of our 
times. If a man of our day has once under- 
stood that every defence of property or person 
by violence is obtained only by threatening to 
murder or by murdering, he can no longer with 
a quiet conscience make use of that which is 
obtained by murder or by threats of murder, 
and still less can he take part in the murders or 
in threatening to murder. So that what is 
wanted to free people from their misery is also 
needed for the satisfaction of the moral con- 
sciousness of every individual. And, therefore, 
for each individual there can be no doubt that 
both for the general good and to fulfil the law 
of his life he must take no part in violence, nor 
justify it, nor make use of it. 



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